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LANGUAGE POLICIES IN
EDUCATION
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How do language policies in schools create inequalities among learners? How do policies
marginalize some students while granting privilege to others? How do language policies
in education serve the interests of dominant groups within societies? How can linguistic
minorities further their interests through attempts to change language policies in schools?

This new edition of Language Policies in Education takes a fresh look at these enduring ques-
tions at the heart of fundamental debates about the role of schools in society, the links
between education and employment, and conflicts between linguistic minorities and “main-
stream” populations. Chapter authors are major scholars in language policy and critical lan-
guage studies. Reflecting developments in language policy since the publication of the first
edition in 2002, all chapters are original and substantial contributions to the study of language
policy and exemplify major theories and research methods in the field. The case studies,
international in scope, present cutting-­edge analyses of important language policy debates in
countries around the world. The chapters are organized around six themes:

• Language Policy in Education

• Competing Agendas
• Indigenous Languages in Postcolonial Education
• Language and Global Capitalism
• Language and Social Conflict
• Language Policy and Social Change

Language Policies in Education, Second Edition, is essential reading for scholars, students, and
other specialists in language policy, education, applied linguistics, critical linguistics, and
language teaching.

James W. Tollefson is Professor, University of Hong Kong, and Professor Emeritus at

the University of Washington, USA.
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LANGUAGE POLICIES
IN EDUCATION
Critical Issues
Second Edition
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Edited by James W. Tollefson

The University of Hong Kong
Second edition published 2013
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2013 Taylor & Francis
The right of James W. Tollefson to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Laurence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. in 2002.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Language policies in education : critical issues / edited by
James W. Tollefson. – 2nd ed.
 p. cm.
1. Language and education. 2. Language policy. 3. Language planning.
I. Tollefson, James W.
P40.8.L369 2012
306.44'9–dc23
2012007228
ISBN: 978-0-415-89458-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-89459-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-81311-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
CONTENTS
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Preface viii
Acknowledgments xii

Part I
Language Policy in Education 1

  1 Critical Issues in Language Policy in Education 3

James W. Tollefson

  2 Language Policy in a Time of Crisis and Transformation 11

James W. Tollefson

  3 Multiple Actors and Arenas in Evolving Language Policies 35

Mary McGroarty

Part II
Competing Agendas 59

  4 A Brief History and Assessment of Language Rights in the

United States 61
Terrence G. Wiley

  5 Righting Language Wrongs in a Plurilingual Context: Language

Policy and Practice in Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast Region 91
Jane Freeland
vi   Contents

  6 Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter: Governmentality and

Footing in the School District of Philadelphia 116
David Cassels Johnson

Part III
Indigenous Languages in Postcolonial Education 137

  7 Language and Education in Kenya: Between the Colonial

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Legacy and the New Constitutional Order 139

Alamin Mazrui

  8 Language-­in-Education Policy and Planning in Africa’s

Monolingual Kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland 156
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

Part IV
Language and Global Capitalism 173

  9 The Japanisation of English Language Education: Promotion

of the National Language within Foreign Language Policy 175
Kayoko Hashimoto

10 India’s Economic Restructuring with English: Benefits

versus Costs 191
E. Annamalai

Part V
Language and Social Conflict 209

11 Rwanda Switches to English: Conflict, Identity, and

Language-­in-Education Policy 211
Beth Lewis Samuelson

12 The Critical Villager Revisited: Continuing Transformations

of Language and Education in Solomon Islands 233
David Welchman Gegeo and Karen Ann Watson-­Gegeo
Contents   vii

Part VI
Language Policy and Social Change 253

13 Language Planning and Cultural Continuance in Native

America 255
Teresa L. McCarty

14 New Functional Domains of Quechua and Aymara:

Mass Media and Social Media 278
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Serafín M. Coronel-­Molina

15 Language Policy and Democratic Pluralism 301

James W. Tollefson

List of Contributors 311

Index 312
PREFACE TO THE SECOND
EDITION
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The enthusiastic response of readers and reviewers to the first edition of Lan-
guage Policies in Education: Critical Issues, published in 2002, was deeply satisfying
to everyone who worked on the project, especially the authors, who marshaled
their effort, expertise, and experience in the complex task of understanding lan-
guage policies in social, political, and economic context. Their research had the
ultimate aim of contributing to the development of progressive language pol-
icies that respond to the concrete social, economic, and political concerns, as
well as the profound fears, of individuals everywhere facing an increasingly
uncertain future. In this effort, the authors devoted their work to finding alter­
natives to language policies that grant privilege to some through structural forms
of inequality. All authors faced the underlying question of how progressive lan-
guage policies might contribute to a vision of a realistic and workable demo-
cratic pluralism in which language rights are assured, multilingualism is
protected, and language use – in all of its astonishing complexity – is openly and
enthusiastically protected for all. This was the motivation for that first edition,
and it continues to drive critical research in language policy today.
This second edition continues that commitment to critical language policy
analysis – what Tom Donahue in the first edition called the aggressive analysis
of policies to identify and characterize their underlying aims and ideologies. To
that end, this new volume seeks an understanding of the links between language
policies and broader social, economic, and political processes.
Several of the authors who contributed to that first edition again present
their work: David Welchman Gegeo, Alamin Mazrui, Teresa L. McCarty, Mary
McGroarty, Karen Ann Watson-­Gegeo, and Terrence G. Wiley. All of their
chapters are completely new for this second edition. Wiley’s history of language
policy in the United States includes some historical material from the previous
Preface   ix

edition, along with significant new analysis of recent, dramatic changes in lan-
guage policy in several states.
New contributors offering new case studies for this second edition are
E. Annamalai, Serafín M. Coronel-­Molina, Jane Freeland, Kayoko Hashimoto,
David Cassels Johnson, Nkonko Kamwangamalu, and Beth Lewis Samuelson.
These scholars were invited because their previous work fits well with the goals
and the theoretical frameworks that unify this volume, and because their pub-
lished research has been important and compelling.
In selecting contributors, I sought case studies of countries with a range of
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historical experiences of socioeconomic and political development. I am espe-

cially pleased that this edition includes chapters focusing on Rwanda, Lesotho,
Swaziland, Nicaragua, and Solomon Islands, all of which have been underrepre-
sented in the research literature on language policy. The other cases – Native
America, Kenya, Japan, India, the Andes (Quechua and Aymara), and the
United States – address fundamental issues with broad implications for language
policies in many contexts worldwide. The authors of the chapters are among
the most experienced scholars working on the cases presented here, and offer
what I believe to be the best available analysis.
This new edition will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in lan-
guage policy, education, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and critical lan-
guage studies. It may be adopted as a textbook in graduate and advanced
undergraduate courses on language policy, language education, and
sociolinguistics.
Readers may find it useful to begin with Chapters 1–3, which present the
historical, theoretical, and analytical framework for the case studies. The final
chapter summarizes the major research issues that emerge from this volume, and
may be fruitfully read before or after the case studies.
The chapters are divided into six parts. Part I, “Language Policy in Educa-
tion,” begins with the editor’s introduction to the volume, including a brief
overview of the chapters. Chapter 2 presents a critical historical analysis of the
impact of nationalism and identity on language policy, the transformations cur-
rently taking place under globalization, and the implications of these changes for
language policy research. In Chapter 3, Mary McGroarty explores the involve-
ment of multiple actors (both public and private) in language policy and import-
ant trends in contemporary education, even as language policies in schools
continue to be constrained by traditional ideologies, shifting political and eco-
nomic pressures, institutional practices, and shrinking resources.
In Part II, “Competing Agendas,” Chapter 4 by Terrence G. Wiley provides
an overview of the historical and contemporary contexts for educational language
rights in the United States. A key focus of this chapter is the link between lan-
guage policies and related social policies, dominant beliefs, and power relationships
among groups. In Chapter 5, Jane Freeland discusses the development and imple-
mentation of minority language rights policy in Nicaragua’s multiethnic and
x   Preface

plurilingual Caribbean Coast region, where a rights-­based language policy has

revealed critical differences between its underlying ideology and the local lan-
guage ideologies and practices of the people it was intended to serve. In Chapter
6, David Cassels Johnson uses ethnographic methods to examine changes in lan-
guage policy in the School District of Philadelphia that were associated with
restructuring of the central administration and changes in key personnel. John-
son’s analysis particularly explores the influence of individuals in language poli-
cymaking and implementation.
The chapters in Part III, “Indigenous Languages in Postcolonial Education,”
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explore current transformations in language policy in Kenya, Swaziland, and

Lesotho. In Chapter 7, Alamin Mazrui offers a historical analysis of the recent
changes and the important political and economic implications of provisions in
the new Kenyan Constitution that make Kiswahili co-­official with English. In
Chapter 8, Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu compares language policies in the
nations of Swaziland and Lesotho, arguing that many of the factors that influ-
ence policymaking in multilingual states are also crucial in these largely mono-
lingual nations.
Part IV, “Language and Global Capitalism,” includes two cases in which lan-
guage policies are closely linked with the processes of globalization. Examining
the discourse of English-­promotion policies in Japan, Kayoko Hashimoto, in
Chapter 9, examines the central paradox of recent policy changes: that the
spread of English takes place within a broader framework of the promotion of
the Japanese language. In Chapter 10, E. Annamalai shows that the goal of equal
access to economic opportunities through English in India threatens to produce
unequal educational outcomes that will exacerbate social and economic
inequalities.
In Part V, “Language and Social Conflict,” two chapters examine the efforts
of state officials and everyday citizens to manage the complex issues of language
in education within the context of political violence and social change. In
Chapter 11, Beth Lewis Samuelson explores the social and political forces
underlying Rwanda’s recent shift from French-­medium to English-­medium
education. Samuelson examines the important historical connections between
current medium of instruction debates and ethnic identity, including issues
underlying the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In Chapter 12, David Welchman
Gegeo and Karen Ann Watson-­Gegeo examine what happened to an indigen-
ous educational program in Kwara‘ae, Malaita, that was disrupted by the viol-
ence that has plagued Solomon Islands for the past decade. Their analysis reveals
creative and innovative local efforts to reconstruct and restructure education in
the midst of massive social disruptions and political violence.
Part VI, “Language Policy and Social Change,” examines two cases of inno­
vative community efforts to revitalize threatened languages and the communities
that speak them. Teresa L. McCarty, in Chapter 12, offers a detailed historical
and contemporary analysis of language revitalization in Native American
Preface   xi

communities in the United States. In Chapter 13, Serafín M. Coronel-­Molina

examines mass media and new social media in Quechua and Aymara in
the  Andes region. Both authors document the important process of bringing
endangered languages into new sociolinguistic domains. In the final chapter, I
offer an integrative summary of the key themes and conclusions of this book. In
particular, the chapter examines the importance of language policies for demo-
cratic political movements around the world.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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Like the first edition, this new edition of Language Policies in Education is the
result of a collaborative effort by the impressive group of scholars who wrote
these chapters. To them I am grateful, not only for taking on challenging and
important research, but also for revealing how language policies are implicated
in some of the most important issues facing humanity today. I am fortunate to
be able to work with the best editor I know, Naomi Silverman at Routledge,
whose commitment over many years to critical, educational, sociolinguistic, and
pedagogical research has helped to shape and give direction to language policy
studies. For encouragement and financial support of this project, I thank the
following units of the International Christian University in Tokyo: the Depart-
ment of Media, Communication, and Culture, especially Professor John Maher;
the Institute for Educational Research and Service; and the 21st Century Center
of Excellence Program on Research and Education for Peace, Security and
Kyosei. For offering a supportive new home, I thank the Faculty of Education at
the University of Hong Kong, especially Dean Stephen Andrews and Chair
Professor Amy B. M. Tsui. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the
Department of English at the University of Washington, especially Professor
Sandra Silberstein, for three decades of unwavering encouragement and support
of my work.
I dedicate this project to the memory of Charles A. Ferguson. Through his
remarkable knowledge of linguistics, his unwavering decency and humanity,
and the wisdom he so willingly shared, Fergie taught a generation of linguists to
care about languages and the people who speak them.
James W. Tollefson
Hong Kong and Tokyo
PART I

Language Policy in
Education
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The three chapters in this part of the book examine the following critical issues:
What are the major factors affecting language policies in education, and how do
these factors constrain policy alternatives? How have the processes of global
capitalism, such as migration, increasing economic inequality, widespread state
violence, and the severe economic crisis in the system, affected language policies
in schools? What is the role of corporations and other non-­governmental
agents? What methodologies in language policy research are appropriate for
current issues in language policy?
In Chapter 1, the introduction to this book, James W. Tollefson explains the
organization and the major themes of the book, including the key ideas that
recur throughout the chapters. Chapter 1 also offers extended summaries of
each of the subsequent chapters. In Chapter 2, James W. Tollefson presents a
critical historical analysis of the impact on language policy of nationalism, glo-
balization, and changing conceptions of identity. The chapter emphasizes the
historic transformations currently taking place under globalization, and the
implications of these changes for language policies in education and for language
policy research. In Chapter 3, Mary McGroarty explores major contemporary
trends in education, such as privatization, development of alternative forms of
teacher education, and the role of corporations and non-­profit foundations. Her
analysis raises profound questions about the future of education, particularly the
capacity of educational institutions to adequately develop the language abilities
learners need for democratic participation, critical awareness, and human
imagination.
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1
CRITICAL ISSUES IN LANGUAGE
POLICY IN EDUCATION
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James W. Tollefson

In the first edition of Language Policies in Education, six critical issues guided
authors as they prepared their chapters. These issues, formed as questions,
were as follows: (1) What are the major forces affecting language policies in
education, and how do these forces constrain policies and public discussion of
policy alternatives? (2) How do state authorities use educational language pol-
icies to manage access to language rights and language education, and what
are the consequences of specific programs and policies for language minority
communities? (3) How do state authorities use language policy for the pur-
poses of political and cultural governance? (4) How do language policies in
education help to create, sustain, or reduce political conflict among different
ethnolinguistic groups? (5) How are local policies and programs in language
education affected by global processes such as colonialism, decolonization, the
spread of English, and the growth of the integrated capitalist economy? (6)
How can indigenous peoples and other language minorities develop educa-
tional policies and programs that serve their social and linguistic needs, in the
face of significant pressures exerted by more powerful social and ethnolinguis-
tic groups?
In seeking to answer these questions, the authors of the 16 chapters in the
first edition articulated four major generalizations about language policies in
education: (1) multilingualism is commonplace in contemporary states, despite
widespread ideological programs supporting monolingual policies; (2) language
polices are a key mechanism for managing social and political conflict; (3) con-
flicts over language policies usually have their origin in conflicts in which lan-
guage symbolizes some aspect of a struggle over the distribution of economic
resources and political power; and (4) policy and ideology have crucial connec-
tions that must be explored if we hope to understand policymaking processes,
4   J. W. Tollefson

constraints on policy alternatives, and the socially constructed meanings of spe-

cific policies and practices.
While continuing to address these important questions about power, inequal-
ity, and the struggle by ethnic and linguistic minorities for social, political, and
economic well-­being, the chapters in this second edition explore additional
questions that have emerged from the crisis of the economy and politics in the
past decade: (1) How have the processes of global capitalism, such as migration,
increasing economic inequality, widespread state violence, and the severe eco-
nomic crisis in the system, affected language policies in schools? (2) What is the
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role of corporations and other non-­governmental agents in language policy­

making? (3) How have nationalist, anti-­immigrant, and similar political move-
ments affected language policies, and how can ethnolinguistic minorities and
their progressive allies resist these movements? (4) How has the spread of the
discourse of human rights affected language policymaking? (5) How are newly
emerging conceptions of identity linked with language policies in education? (6)
What methodologies in language policy research are appropriate for the study of
current issues in language policy? Such questions confront some of the most
profound issues in the world today: the crisis of capitalism, political extremism
and violence against minorities, the overwhelming dominance of corporate
power, transformations in national and social identities, and the struggle for
human rights.
As they examine individual cases of language policies in education, the
authors of the chapters in this volume explore three recurring ideas: (1) the
transformed role of nationalism and identity in language policies in many con-
texts; (2) the weakening of the institutions of the nation-­state and other tradi-
tional forms of social organization by the overwhelming power of global
capitalism, with significant implications for language policies in education; and
(3) changing paradigms in language policy research. These ideas are explored in
detail in Chapter 2.

Preview of the Chapters

The chapters in this collection deal with a wide range of important issues in
quite different contexts. All of the contexts, however, have been profoundly
influenced by the major social, economic, cultural, and political changes that
have accelerated since the last two decades of the 20th century. Often grouped
under the term “globalization,” these fundamental transformations, especially
migration, urbanization, language loss, and language shift, have created new
political movements and forms of resistance, new social relations, emerging
social identities, and deep personal anxieties. In “Language Policy in a Time of
Crisis and Transformation,” I explore the implications of these major transfor-
mations for language policies in education. The chapter includes an overview of
the history of research on language policies in education, focusing specifically
Critical Issues   5

on changes in research questions and research methods. This historical summary

also examines ideological shifts, in particular the increasing attention to power
and inequality, which have characterized language policy research since the
1990s. The chapter analyzes the impact of the current economic and political
crisis on language policies in education, the implications of the weakening of
the nation-­state and its associated forms of nationalism, and new methods of
language policy research.
In recent decades, the number of actors involved in language policymaking
has expanded considerably, along with the social domains, including education,
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in which language policies are important. In “Multiple Actors and Arenas in

Evolving Language Policies,” Mary McGroarty examines these new actors,
particularly in the private sector. She emphasizes that policies are increasingly
contingent and multilateral, although in public education they remain tightly
constrained by traditional ideologies, shifting political pressures, institutional
inertia, and a shrinking resource base. In many settings, public institutions are
ceding control of educational language policies to private institutions and influ-
ence, and to various forms of public–private partnerships. Although medium of
instruction policies remain crucial in many settings, new factors, including the
fragmentation of education, the growth of alternative forms of teacher educa-
tion, micro-­level processes and local contingencies, raise fundamental questions
about whether current educational systems can develop the language abilities
required for democratic participation, critical consciousness, and human imagi-
native capacities.
The weakening of public institutions is particularly evident in the United
States. In “A Brief History and Assessment of Language Rights in the United
States,” Terrence G. Wiley summarizes the history of two main rights: (1) the
right to access an education, which allows for social, economic, and political
participation; and (2) the right to an education in one’s mother tongue(s). His
chapter argues that both rights are necessary if language minority students are to
participate in the economy and sociopolitical system, and to maintain continuity
with their communities and cultures. In his analysis, Wiley locates educational
language policies in their relationship to other societal policies (e.g., immigra-
tion), dominant beliefs, and power relationships among groups. The analysis
includes implicit, covert, and informal practices, which can have as much
impact as official policies. The chapter identifies and explains the importance of
key federal cases involving rights for educational equity, access and accommoda-
tion, and it chronicles the rise and fall of federal support for bilingual education.
A major focus of Wiley’s analysis is the negative impact of policies during the
past 20 years that have increasingly restricted language minority rights. In par-
ticular, he focuses on the role of the state of Arizona in promoting regressive
policies. This movement to restrict minority rights is linked with the revival of
the concept of “states’ rights,” which throughout US history has shaped policies
affecting minority education.
6   J. W. Tollefson

Language rights are a focus of language policy debates in many other con-
texts as well. One of the most explicit debates about language rights has taken
place in Nicaragua, particularly in minority and multilingual communities on
the Caribbean Coast. In “Righting Language Wrongs in a Plurilingual Context:
Language Policy and Practice in Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast Region,” Jane
Freeland discusses the development and implementation of minority language
rights policy since the Sandinista revolution in 1979. As a result of centuries of
multilingual interaction, the Coast’s indigenous and ethnic minorities have
developed dynamic, multifaceted identities expressed through complex multi-
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lingual repertoires and practices. The region’s history and sociolinguistic

ecology, including three indigenous and two African-­Caribbean minorities and
a Spanish-­speaking Mestizo majority, is highly complex, yet sufficiently small to
enable detailed observation of the effects of policy decisions. Especially note-
worthy are the intercultural-­bilingual education programs in the region’s state
schools. As a rights-­based language policy was implemented in the region,
crucial differences emerged between its underlying language ideology and the
local language ideologies and practices of the minorities the policy was intended
to serve. The resulting tension reveals the gulf between language policies based
on European and American conceptions of a direct relationship between dis-
tinct languages and stable group identities, in contrast with local language ideol-
ogies that emerged from a history of resistance to assimilation and
community-­centered notions of identity. As a result, state policy focusing on
relationships between each minority language and Spanish cannot accommodate
the multilingual practices and highly fluid, changing social identities of the
Coast’s residents.
While rigid language policies in some settings fail to address the complex
sociolinguistic ecologies of local communities, in other settings we find that lan-
guage policies themselves may be fluid, changeable, and subject to interpreta-
tion and appropriation. In “Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter:
Governmentality and Footing in the School District of Philadelphia,” David
Cassels Johnson presents findings from a three-­year ethnographic study of bilin-
gual education and language policy in the School District of Philadelphia that
focuses on the role of governmentality in language policy processes (Foucault,
1991). Johnson argues that language policy must be understood as extending
from macro-­level texts and discourses through the micro level of discursive
practices. His analysis addresses an important current issue in language policy
research: the tension between theoretical conceptions of language policy as a
form of social control of minority languages and minority language users, and
empirical research that focuses on the power of educators to serve as active
agents in policy processes. Through his analysis of the impact of changes in per-
sonnel in the midst of the School District’s implementation of the federal edu-
cation law No Child Left Behind, Johnson argues that this tension can be
fruitfully explored by combining critical analysis of macro-­level policy texts and
Critical Issues   7

discourses with ethnographic data on language policy interpretation and

appropriation.
In August 2010, the citizens of Kenya voted for a new constitution in a ref-
erendum that has the potential to lead to revolutionary changes in social and
political life in Kenya. Especially important are provisions of the new constitu-
tion that raise the status of Kiswahili to a co-­equal position with English as the
country’s official languages. The process of drafting new statutes to articulate in
greater detail this co-­official relationship is currently taking place. In “Language
and Education in Kenya: Between the Colonial Legacy and the New Constitu-
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tional Order,” Alamin Mazrui discusses the implications of Kiswahili’s new

national status. The chapter provides the historical context for educational pol-
icies that have framed English and Kiswahili over the years, from the colonial
period to the new postcolonial constitutional framework. With a complex
history of competition and accommodation, the two languages may now
become central to a new bilingual policy in education.
Whereas Kenya is a complex multilingual setting in which Kiswahili and
English are two languages of wider communication, Lesotho and Swaziland are
largely monolingual. With almost everyone speaking the indigenous official lan-
guage – seSotho in Lesotho and siSwati in Swaziland – what language policy
issues do these states face? In “Language-­in-Education Policy and Planning in
Africa’s Monolingual Kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland,” Nkonko M.
Kamwangamalu argues that language policies in education designed to promote
seSotho and siSwati as media of instruction in public schools face the same
obstacles that impede similar policies in Africa’s multilingual states, including
elite closure (Scotton, 1990) and the limited economic value of the indigenous
languages compared to the former colonial languages. Using the theoretical
frameworks of game theory and the economics of language (Grin, 2001; Har-
sanyi, 1977; Laitin, 1993), Kamwangamalu discusses these obstacles in the
context of the increasing hegemony of English, which is a co-­official language
with siSwati and seSotho in Swaziland and Lesotho, respectively. Kamwanga-
malu’s analysis explores the prospects for status planning for indigenous African
languages in education in Swaziland and Lesotho, as well as in multilingual states
elsewhere in Africa and beyond.
Although the hegemony of English in education is evident in many contexts
worldwide, perhaps nowhere is it more explicitly a focus of national policy
debates than in Japan. Particularly important is a new national curriculum for
English in primary schools fully implemented in 2011–2012, and a new high
school curriculum to be fully implemented from 2013. These important curri­
cular changes are central to the government’s plan to cultivate “Japanese with
English abilities” (Monbukagaku-­shô, 2003), a policy goal that is based on the
widespread belief that Japanese citizens must be equipped with English skills if
Japan is to remain competitive in the global economy. Despite the stated
emphasis on English in the current educational policy, however, these new
8   J. W. Tollefson

c­ urricula are not straightforward efforts to pursue early education in English and
expanded use of English as a medium of instruction. In fact, as Kayoko Hashi-
moto argues in “The Japanisation of English Language Education: Promotion of
the National Language within Foreign Language Policy,” these new curricula
are elaborate schemes to foster a particular attitude toward communication with
foreigners by emphasizing the differences between foreign languages and cul-
tures and Japanese language and culture. Through careful analysis of the curri­
cular content, Hashimoto concludes that what is promoted through the new
curricula is not merely English language learning, but also the national language
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( Japanese) linked with a newly reinvigorated Japanese national identity.

Like the government of Japan, the government of India offers an economic
rationale for English promotion policies in public schools. The recent historic
decision to move toward a market economy in India has meant that the skills
taught in public education are increasingly determined by the communication
demands of the business sector and the knowledge demands of the new
economy. Thus, integration with the global market has replaced nationalism,
national cultural identity, national integration, and cultural pluralism as the major
goal of education. Increasingly, Indians (including the rural poor) believe in the
promise of English, which in the new India is a product that can be easily sold,
embedded within an ideology of English as the key to the creation of a new,
largely middle-­class labor force. Despite such optimism, E. Annamalai, in “India’s
Economic Restructuring with English: Benefits versus Costs,” argues that the
apparent convergence of the interests of the government, global capitalism, and
the people disguises the true costs of English promotion policies. In a critique of
English hegemony, Annamalai shows that the push in India for economic trans-
formation through English entails the hidden costs of increased social and eco-
nomic inequality, the threat of social unrest, and the abandonment of tens of
millions of citizens whom the new educational policy can never reach.
In some settings, underlying economic inequality and its associated forms of
social injustice spill over into violence in which language plays a role. In Rwanda
during a guerrilla insurgency in the spring of 1994, genocidal violence broke out
that claimed the lives of an estimated 937,000 Rwandans – mostly Tutsis – attacked
by the Francophone Hutu-­led government (Republic of Rwanda, 2008). The
killing was ended when the Anglophone Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ), led by
the descendants of longtime Rwandan Tutsi exiles who had fled persecution after
1959, was successful in its military campaign against the government. At the outset
of the genocide, Rwanda belonged to La Francophonie, but by the end of the war
the country was under the control of an Anglophone government that promptly
declared English to be an official language. In “Rwanda Switches to English: Con-
flict, Identity and Language-­in-Education Policy,” Beth Lewis Samuelson reviews
the history of language policy in Rwanda, focusing on the country’s three major
languages: Kinyarwanda, French, and English. Then she turns to the close relation-
ship between language choice and ethnicity, particularly in the current political
Critical Issues   9

context, in which public discussion of ethnicity is officially precluded. She presents

results of her interviews with Rwandans about the current language situation and
future prospects for Rwanda’s struggle with the contradictory pressures of the
influence of English as a global language and the needs of a multilingual population
within an educational system characterized by inadequate human and economic
resources.
Like Rwanda, Solomon Islands has been plagued by violence. In “The Crit-
ical Villager Revisited: Continuing Transformations of Language and Education
in Solomon Islands,” David Welchman Gegeo and Karen Ann Watson-­Gegeo
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continue their 25-year study of Malaitans on Guadalcanal and the neighboring

island of Malaita. In their original chapter for the first edition of this book, they
examined an important educational initiative in which villagers in Kwara‘ae,
Malaita, were claiming leadership in rural development and schooling, with
some local teachers using the Kwara‘ae language and indigenous cultural prac-
tices in classroom pedagogy. In addition, the Kwara‘ae Genealogy Project
focused on the Kwara‘ae language, indigenous cultural practices, and indigenous
epistemology. In the past decade, however, ongoing violence has forced 20,000
people of Malaita heritage living on Guadalcanal to flee to Malaita with their
families. The violence and the severe social disruption caused by forced mass
migration to an island that many had never even visited meant that children
who suddenly left Guadalcanal schools entered Malaita schools that were in
crisis. In this context, the indigenous projects that Gegeo and Watson-­Gegeo
described in their earlier research were ended. In their current research, they
examine the formation of new schools and the rebirth of indigenous projects led
by a new generation of adults seeking solutions to the social and educational
crisis their children confront. Their research finds Malaitans – including
Kwara‘ae villagers – in the midst of continuing social tensions, reasserting their
indigenous cultural identities, languages, and knowledge.
Gegeo and Watson-­Gegeo’s chapter explores determined efforts under difficult
circumstances to achieve “cultural continuance” (Ortiz, 2002), which refers to
collective resistance to hegemonic forces and a will to sustain linguistic and cul-
tural communities. In “Language Planning and Cultural Continuance in Native
North America,” Teresa L. McCarty undertakes a critical analysis of language shift
and recovery in Native America, drawing on theory and practice from educa-
tional and linguistic anthropology, Indigenous studies, and critical applied linguis-
tics. Her analysis places language revitalization and reclamation processes within
the larger context of the struggle to sustain cultural communities. Drawing on
two recently completed ethnographic studies of youth involvement in language
and cultural continuance, McCarty examines youths’ language choices within dis-
courses that simultaneously position their heritage language as essential to an
“authentic” Indigenous identity and a barrier to social and economic mobility.
The sociolinguistic praxis of youth in Native America takes place within an
intense media environment. In addition to traditional media such as print, radio,
10   J. W. Tollefson

television, and film, new media such as cell phones, Facebook, and chat rooms
have greatly expanded access to culture and information. What are the implica-
tions of new media for endangered languages? In “New Functional Domains of
Quechua and Aymara: Social Media and the Internet,” Serafín M. Coronel-­
Molina examines how developments in new media support language policy and
planning, specifically language revitalization and documentation of indigenous
languages in the Andes. How are multimodal literacies evolving in these new
media? What are the implications of the development of new multimodal litera-
cies and new media in the context of indigenous communities? Coronel-­Molina
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demonstrates the surprising complexity of available multi-­media and multimodal

resources in Quechua and Aymara, including pedagogical materials for language
maintenance and for expanding the languages into new sociolinguistic domains.
His analysis points to the potential of the remarkable range of films, recordings,
computer programs, video games, search engines, e-­books, e-­dictionaries, soft-
ware, websites, blogs, Facebook, and much more, all available in the Quechua
and Aymara languages. Can the combination of top-­down and bottom-­up initi-
atives involving new media change the prospects for endangered languages?
This question is at the heart of Coronel-­Molina’s chapter.
The final chapter, “Language Policy and Democratic Pluralism,” offers an
integrative summary of the preceding chapters and explores the relationship
between language policy and democratic decision making. The chapter exam-
ines the movement for language rights, the role of social and political struggle,
and the implications of the research reported in this book for pluralist policies,
language policy research methods, and democratic processes of decision making.

References
Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon & P. Miller (Eds.).
The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (pp. 87–104). Hemel Hempstead, UK:
Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Grin, F. (2001). English as economic value. World Englishes, 20 (1), 65–78.
Harsanyi, J. C. (1977). Rational behavior and bargaining equilibrium in games and social situ-
ations. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Laitin, D. (1993). The game theory of language regimes. International Political Science
Review, 14 (3), 227–239.
Monbukagaku-­shô. (2003). 「英語が 使える日本人」の育成のための行動計画の
策定について [Regarding the establishment of an action plan to cultivate
Japanese who can use English]. Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/
houdou/15/03/030318a.htm
Ortiz, S. (2002). Out there somewhere. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Republic of Rwanda. (2008). Official website of the Republic of Rwanda. Available at
www.rw.gov.
Scotton, C. M. (1990). Elite closure as boundary maintenance. In B. Weinstein (Ed.),
Language policy and political development (pp. 25–52). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
2
LANGUAGE POLICY IN A TIME OF
CRISIS AND TRANSFORMATION
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James W. Tollefson

The first edition of Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues highlighted the
rapid expansion of critical approaches to language studies, which focus on
power, inequality, language discrimination, language rights, and especially the
role of the state and institutions in shaping language use and language acquisi-
tion through coercive language policies. As was noted in that first edition, a
critical perspective to language-­in-education policies raises several crucial
questions:

How do language policies in schools create inequalities among learners?

How do policies marginalize some students while granting privilege to
others? How do language policies in education serve the interests of dom-
inant groups within societies? How can linguistic minorities further their
interests through attempts to change language policies in schools?
(Tollefson, 2002a, pp. 3–4)

As chapters in the first edition demonstrated, these questions are at the heart of
fundamental issues in every society: the role of schools, the links between edu-
cation and employment, and the unequal relationships among ethnic, national,
and linguistic groups.
A lot has happened since the chapters for that first edition were written,
during 2000 and 2001. A harsh, predatory form of global capitalism has tempo-
rarily triumphed over alternative economic systems. One result is that the spread
of English and the loss of other languages have rapidly accelerated, with policies
in many countries encouraging the learning and use of English at the expense of
children’s home languages. China’s economic transformation has continued,
accompanied by major changes in medium-­of-instruction policies designed to
12   J. W. Tollefson

encourage the use of English in higher education and in specific fields of science
and technology. Conservative and right-­wing governments have won elections
in North America, Europe, and elsewhere, with neo-­fascist movements in some
places gaining significant influence over policymaking. Support for extremist,
right-­wing political movements has led to a wide range of anti-­immigrant pol-
icies, including the reassertion of dominant languages in education (e.g., in
France, England, Australia, and the United States). The United States invaded
and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, overthrowing the governments of both
countries and initiating violence that continues to the present. One result has
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been increasing state support for the teaching of Arabic, Farsi, and other lan-
guages of the Middle East (and Central Asia), but also “profiling” of individuals
who appear to be “Middle Eastern” or who speak languages of that region. More
broadly, the condition of permanent war that the “war on terror” entails means
that “patriotic” and right-­wing efforts to assert traditional forms of national iden-
tity have been successful in many countries, often accompanied by significant
restrictions on civil liberties and new discourses of nationalism and patriotism.
For instance, English-­only policies, represented as both symbolic and practical
expressions of national identity and patriotism, receive state support throughout
most of the United States, whereas supporters of pluralist policies have been
largely eliminated from the policy debate (e.g., in the recent US Supreme Court
ruling in Horne v. Flores that recognized opponents of bilingual education as the
only legitimate experts on bilingual education policies [Yamagami, in press]).
In some settings, populist and democratic movements have made important
gains. Popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa have challenged
entrenched leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere. Some of these
movements have been led by young people who espouse cosmopolitan identi-
ties linked with multilingualism and interaction (both digital and face to face)
across ethnolinguistic boundaries, suggesting that a new push for English may
take place in that part of the world. Yet movements for democratic reform
often entail a period of nationalist resurgence or the assertion of ethnolinguistic
identities, and so the implications for language policies in education are likely to
be complex and variable from one context to another. In Latin America, several
progressive and leftist governments have been elected, leaders of indigenous
populations now vie for national office, and languages other than Spanish have
gained increasing support in education and other domains (e.g., in Bolivia
and Peru). Elsewhere, popular protests in Europe (e.g., in Greece and England)
and large demonstrations in North America (e.g., in the states of Wisconsin and
Ohio, and the Occupy Wall Street movement) suggest that the crisis of demo-
cracy has entered a new and tumultuous period. Intensified calls for democratic
reform around the world have yet to result in widespread changes in language
policymaking processes, but alliances of the poor, working class, and middle
class, which include increasing numbers of ethnolinguistic minorities, may yet
lead to policies that protect and promote multilingualism.
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   13

Perhaps most importantly, in 2008 the capitalist economic system entered an

extended period of crisis and contraction, with catastrophic results for poor,
working-­class, and middle-­class people in countries around the world. Because
the economic collapse has restricted employment opportunities for all but the
wealthiest individuals, enrollment in secondary and higher education has
become increasingly seen as an alternative to unemployment and as an attempt
to open new doors of opportunity. Yet deep cuts in education funding in many
states have meant that programs such as bilingual education, literacy, and class-
room support for linguistic minorities have been reduced or eliminated. Indeed,
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with severe budget reductions, education itself has entered a period of crisis that
is likely to persist for many years to come.
These dramatic changes in the world since the first edition provoke new
questions for scholars and practitioners in language policy: How have the pro­
cesses of global capitalism – especially the migration of labor, increasing eco-
nomic inequality, and widespread state-­initiated violence, as well as the severe
economic crisis in the system – affected language policies in schools? What is
the role of increasingly powerful corporations (and other non-­governmental
agents)? How has the influence of extreme right-­wing and neo-­fascist political
groups affected language policies, and how can ethnolinguistic minorities resist
these groups? How has the movement for human rights affected language poli-
cymaking? How are newly emerging conceptions of identity linked with lan-
guage policies in education? What methodologies in language policy research
are appropriate for the study of these questions?
In addressing these questions, the chapters in this second edition point to
three central ideas: (1) the transformed role of nationalism and identity in lan-
guage policies; (2) the weakening of the institutions of the nation-­state (and
many other traditional forms of social organization) by the overwhelming power
of global capitalism, with major implications for language policies in education;
and (3) changing paradigms in language policy research. In what follows, I
explore each of these central ideas.

The Transformed Role of Nationalism and Identity in Language

Policy
Although a detailed account of nationalism and identity is beyond the scope of
this book, to understand fully the cases in the chapters it is crucial to understand
the rise of nationalism and the nation-­state in the 18th and 19th centuries, the
impact on language policy, and the ways in which the current economic system
of global capitalism undermines many of the institutional, cultural, and social
forms and practices of language in the nation-­state. Indeed, unless we under-
stand the tensions between nationalism and the nation-­state on the one hand,
and globalization and the dominance of non-­state agents (especially multi­
national corporations) on the other, we cannot adequately explain the rise of
14   J. W. Tollefson

English and its increasing diversity, the loss of hundreds of languages worldwide,
emerging forms of bilingualism and identity, the reassertion of monolingual pol-
icies in many states of Europe and North America, the impact of migration on
language policies, and the movement for linguistic human rights. Thus, I turn
now to the rise of nationalism and the nation-­state, and their implications for
conceptions of identity, and then I consider their impact on language policies in
education. Later, I examine the decline of the power and authority of the
nation-­state and other forms of social organization.
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The Rise of Nationalism and the Nation-­State

Nationalism has generated an enormous body of scholarly literature over the
past 120 years. Within that literature, the study of language and nationalism has
been a particular focus of Fishman (1972a, 1972b), Anderson (1993), Das Gupta
(1970), Fishman, Ferguson, and Das Gupta (1968), and many others. National-
ism and the nation-­state in Europe deserve particular attention, because they
provided the key organizing discourse of identity in the 20th century, and the
model for similar processes and institutions elsewhere.
Since the 18th century, nationalism has undergone a process of adaptation
and change. As Anderson points out (1993), it was the French Revolution,
known worldwide through print, which made the idea of nationalist revolution
concrete and learnable, and a model for later revolutionary movements outside
Europe. Nationalist revolutions required national communities – groups of
people who can be transformed into “nations” or “nationalities” claiming legiti-
mate right to a nation-­state – and such groups arise from certain historical pro­
cesses. Especially important to the formation of national communities in Europe
was the standardization of state languages that developed in the 17th and 18th
centuries. Based initially on widely known vernaculars, these varieties were
gradually standardized and graphized, and used for state communication,
becoming available as reified objects capable of forming the basis for nationalist
projects. Thus, the idea of language as the foundation for national identity was
made possible, to a large degree, by the process of standardization (Anderson,
1993). The link between language and nationalism reached fruition first in
Europe, and later it was central to nationalist movements in Malaysia, Indonesia,
Tanzania, and elsewhere (although in some contexts it was marginal, as in the
United States).
Perhaps the central claim of 18th- and 19th-century nationalism in Europe
was that the foundation for a collective political identity (a “nation”) is a
common culture, and that the core of a common culture is language. It is only
through language that the individual simultaneously discovers and expresses
both the inner and the collective self – that is, through language, individual and
collective identities are unified (see Herder, 2002). Inspired in part by the
growing influence of philology and historical linguistics, nationalists held up
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   15

what they viewed as the empirical reality of distinct languages – historically

grounded and geographically bounded – as evidence for the Romantic belief in
the unifying power of human experience. Each “language,” in other words,
captured a unique, historical, and unifying experience, and thus constituted the
essential attribute of the Volk – the People – whose identity is best expressed in
the nation-­state.
This notion of language as individual and collective identity was more than a
Romantic ideal; it was also a cognitive ideal. Languages were believed to be
worldviews (Humboldt, 1999), and so learning a language, according to Euro-
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pean nationalism, entails adopting also the worldview that is shared by its speak-
ers. In Gadamer’s (2004) words, “Language maintains a kind of independent life
over against the individual member of a linguistic community and introduces
him as he grows into it, to a particular attitude and relationship to the world as
well” (p. 401). The reification of language meant that language was not only
the fundamental force unifying individual and collective identity, but also the
foundation of epistemology.
Nationalism was also seen as a historical process of evolution in society that
culminated in the nation-­state, which was viewed as a modern, progressive
advance over tribal societies or “archaic” kingdoms and empires (Hegel, 2011;
Taylor, 1975). Such views obviously influenced Marx (Burns & Fraser, 2000),
as well as Adorno (1994), Habermas (Dallmayr, 1987), and many others inter-
ested in language in society, including supporters of linguistic human rights
(Douzinas, 2002). Although the theory of societal development implicitly cri-
tiqued the nation-­state as a temporary and ultimately limited form of social
organization, nationalists often ignored the future postnational (global) stage,
focusing instead on their demand for a nation-­state that would be congruent
with, and express the fundamental identity of, the “people.” These notions of
societal development meant that the nation-­state increasingly took on the air of
inevitability, an expression of the “perfectibility of the human race” (Hayes,
1968, p.  14). Such principles of nationalism have had significant impact in
Africa, Asia, Latin America, and North America.
It is noteworthy that many of the most influential advocates of these views
were professional linguists or philologists. Humboldt, for example, wrote exten-
sively about languages and was one of the founders of comparative philology.
Because of his work on the uniqueness of each language (though he also
believed in a deeper, unifying nature of all languages), Humboldt is credited
with the first proposal of the theory of linguistic relativity later known as the
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Humboldt also was the Prussian Minister of Education
involved in establishing the German system of education, which later influenced
educational systems in the United States and elsewhere. Thus, we see in Hum-
boldt’s work as linguist, education minister, and philosopher of modern nation-
alism the tripartite ideological foundation for much of 20th-century language
policy in education: (1) the central role of language in individual and national
16   J. W. Tollefson

identity, and therefore also in the nation-­state; (2) a detailed concern for the
history and structure of specific languages as bases for distinctive expressions of
individual identity, collective identity, and epistemology; and (3) the central
importance of education in the processes of nationalism and the institutions of
the nation-­state.
Taken together, these underlying 18th- and 19th-century ideas about lan-
guage, identity, and nationalism have been shared by nearly everyone involved
in language policy debates, including supporters of widely differing policy
options (e.g., monolingual policies, linguistic pluralism, bilingual education, and
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linguistic human rights), and they have persisted in various forms in sociolin-
guistics and language policy studies. To take just one example: Kelman’s influ-
ential analysis of language policy (1971) emphasized the importance of what he
termed “sentimental” and “instrumental” attachments of individuals to the
nation-­state. Kelman was interested in the question of how nation-­states can
sustain their legitimacy among citizens; he was concerned about the threats of
violence and social upheaval that are ever-­present, even in relatively stable
states, and argued that state leaders should constantly seek to maintain support
for their leadership by adopting policies that serve the “sentimental” (identity-­
related) needs of the population as well as “instrumental” (practical economic)
needs. In his view, this task is made easier when individuals are attached to the
state through a common language:

Language thus provides a continuity and scope without which a sense of

overarching nationality could not be constructed; it provides concrete,
emotionally significant products that the individual received from previous
generations and will pass on to future ones and that, in the present, link him
to a widely dispersed population, most of whose members he does not, and
never will, know personally. . . . Beyond that, those primordial bonds that
tie the child to his mother and immediate kin are now extended to all those
who share the same mother tongue. Thus, the attachment to a distant group
takes on some of the emotional intensity and irreducible quality that are
normally restricted to primary relationships.
(p. 31)

Kelman’s argument illustrates a key idea implicit in many language policies in

education: that language is the foundation for nation-­states, which are con-
ceived (as Anderson, 1993, noted) as “deep, horizontal comradeship . . . [which]
makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people,
not so much to kill, as willingly die for such limited imaginings” (p. 224). Kel-
man’s analysis echoes Anderson’s (1993) notion that national identities are
formed among groups with distinct common languages.
Of course, the claimed link between language and national identity, which
has frequently served as a rationale for the suppression of minority languages,
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   17

rests on the simplistic notion that different languages are distinct systems with
clearly demarcated boundaries. This emphasis on the link between language and
identity and the denial of the linguistic complexity that exists within multilin-
gual communities has long been the basis for suppressing language rights among
minorities in nation-­states (Irvine & Gal, 2000). Popular conceptions of lan-
guage in society as well as many scholarly analyses have not well understood the
heteroglossic nature of many home and community environments, the hybrid
linguistic repertoires that are commonplace among individuals worldwide, and
the sociolinguistic ecology (Haugen, 1972/2001) of plurilingual regions or
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contact zones “where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each
other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination
. . . as they are lived out across the globe today” (Pratt, 1992, p.  4). Despite
recent research in language policy studies that clearly demonstrates highly
complex, variable, and fluid language–identity relationships (e.g., Rampton,
1995), the fundamental assumptions about language and identity that emerged
from 19th-century nationalism persist. Indeed, as we shall see in the chapters in
this second edition, beliefs about the close connection between language and
identity and between language and the nation-­state, as well as the central impor-
tance of language policies in education, are evident in virtually all social con-
texts and all cases of language policymaking, including those involving language
maintenance and revival. In his analysis of language shift among Yup’ik youth
in Alaska, for example, Wyman (2004) argues that language is a “marker of local
identity” (p. 256). Similarly, a young person interviewed in McCarty’s research
(this volume, Chapter 13) declares that language creates identity: “When I speak
the language, I think it makes me more [native].” Thus, we find a broad con-
sensus about the central and intimate role of language in all forms of identity –
national, local, and, as we shall see, global. It is not surprising, therefore, that
the rise of the nation-­state and its associated beliefs about identity had direct and
immediate consequences for language policies in education.

The Nation-­State and Language Policy in Education

As the nation-­state became the most important form of economic, political, and
social organization, many human activities were penetrated by the state, perhaps
none more so than education. Alidou (2004) makes the important point that
education in rural villages before the nation-­state and before colonialism was
carried out in local languages without concern for imposed, external varieties.
Only with the introduction of state and colonial educational systems did intense
debates about the medium of instruction arise. Before that, “there was no
debate about medium of instruction, as such education was linguistically and
culturally contextualized in order to respond to the needs of the population” (p.
197). The important corollary of this insight is that medium-­of-instruction pol-
icies emerged with nationalist projects of the state and colonial and postcolonial
18   J. W. Tollefson

authorities. For this reason, language policies in education must be understood

with reference to the aims and institutions of the nation-­state and associated
processes of nationalism, especially the fundamental state function of allocating
among social groups access to economic resources and political power.
Both languages and nationalities are constructed as acts of the imagination that
can become reified objects capable of being called into service, with varying
degrees of self-­consciousness, for various kinds of nationalist projects. Of course,
educators, state authorities, and the state bureaucracy in charge of education
may be aware of their role in supporting the national(ist) agenda only to varying
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degrees. Nevertheless, their policy options are constrained by the demands of

the state and the powerful groups that dominate policymaking (though state
functionaries may differ in their understanding and appropriation of these
demands, as Johnson [2007 and this volume, Chapter 6] demonstrates). For
example, in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the rise of state language policies,
suppression of languages became much more common. As Sulzbach (1943)
noted:

We tend to accept expressions of national consciousness and imperialism

as a matter of course today; therefore, linguistic intolerance appears to be
natural and is accepted as if it had always existed. But history tells a differ-
ent story. . . . At no time before the end of the eighteenth century did the
governments regard the language of the people as a matter which con-
cerned them. They did not attempt to destroy a language when they
acquired new subjects through conquest or peaceful annexation.
(pp. 47–48)

Despite a long history of royal and imperial authorities ignoring vernacular

varieties, rather quickly, as nationalism spread through Europe, language policy
became an effective mechanism for imposing and legitimizing sociopolitical
systems. One of the first institutions for this process was the military. As nation-­
states replaced empires, citizen armies became more common. The problem for
the state was to ensure that these citizens could communicate with their com-
manders and with each other. As Sulzbach (1943) pointed out:

The greatest change [in language policies in France] came when, in the
nineteenth century, citizen armies replaced mercenary armies. . . . The
recruits had to know the language of their leaders, otherwise they could
not obey orders. In this way, the knowledge of French was forced on
those who had previously spoken only their regional patois.
(p. 49)

More recently, a similar imperative was in place in Yugoslavia, where Serbo-­

Croatian was the official language of the military, whereas other languages
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   19

enjoyed official status in education, the courts, the bureaucracy, and other
domains. This privileged position for Serbo-­Croatian was to prove crucial in
the drive to achieve Serbian dominance in the years leading up to the war that
began in 1991 (see Gjurin, 1991; Tollefson, 2002b; Vučelić, 1991). Many such
cases demonstrate that war and military institutions often play a major role in
language policy (e.g., Pakistan; see Rahman, 2007).
As education expanded to reach more and more individuals in the 20th
century, language policies in education were increasingly used to impose the
authority of the nation-­state, and therefore also of the social-­linguistic groups
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that dominate the state apparatus. This process can be seen in many examples
worldwide from the 19th century to the present: the use of standard French in
public education in France since the 19th century; restrictions during and soon
after World War I on German, Polish, and other languages used as media of
instruction in the United States; the imposition of German in place of Slavic
languages in southern Austria under Nazi rule; the standardization of Macedo-
nian and its adoption as an official language of education in southern Yugoslavia
after World War II; the adoption of Bahasa Malay as the medium of instruction
in Malaysia following independence in 1957; the official status of English in
Kenya and of Kiswahili in Tanzania after the two countries achieved independ-
ence from the United Kingdom; the increasing use of English as the medium of
instruction in Singapore since independence in 1965, leading to an “ascendant
English-­knowing bilingual community” (Pakir, 2004, p.  129); the purging of
Albanian speakers and the imposition of Serbian in Kosovo schools beginning in
1989; the reassertion of standard English in the educational system in England
since the 1980s; the end of many bilingual education programs in California
after Proposition 227 passed in a 1998 statewide ballot initiative; and the con-
flict between French and English in education in Rwanda, where the two lan-
guages represent an underlying struggle for political control among two major
ethnic groups and the remnants of two sides in the Rwandan civil war.
Since the last two decades of the 20th century, however, fundamental
changes have begun in social, economic, and political organization on a global
scale. These changes – generally called “globalization” – have undermined
nationalism, the nation-­state, and other traditional forms of social organization
and social identity. The process of globalization, therefore, has direct and imme-
diate consequences for language policies in education.

The Weakening of the Nation-­State under Global Capitalism

My aim in this section is not to address the question of whether contemporary
globalization is a new phenomenon or only the latest manifestation of an old
one. (For a discussion of this question, see Friedman, 2005, and Waltz, 1999.)
Instead, I am interested in the changes in economic, social, and political organ-
ization that have been under way since the late 20th century – changes so
20   J. W. Tollefson

p­ rofound that “the structures of human societies themselves, including even

some of the social foundations of the capitalist economy, are on the point of
being destroyed” (Hobsbawm, 1994, pp.  584–585). With such powerful
changes under way, it should be no surprise that language and language policy
are currently undergoing a historical transformation, driven by the pressures of
globalization, manifest in particular in the rise of the first global language –
English – but also in the fundamental undermining of the languages, the linguis-
tic communities, and the language practices that were central to 20th-century
conceptions of human identity and belonging.
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With the end of the empires of Austria-­Hungary and Turkey and the failed
peace treaties after 1918, new states came into existence. Although the great
ideology of European nationalism had triumphed, many of these new states
were in fact multinational and multilingual. Minorities were to some extent
protected by constitutional and representative rule and (in principle) by protec-
tion of citizens’ rights and freedoms, although these values were often violated
in practice. The economic crisis that began in the 1920s, accelerating in the
1930s to engulf most of the world, brought about the collapse of European lib-
eralism. The Great Depression proved that economic liberalism could not
provide even the most basic of workers’ necessities, and thus political liberalism
fell into disfavor as well (though it remained dominant in some states, notably
the United Kingdom, France until the German invasion, the United States,
Canada, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Australia, and New Zealand). Elsewhere,
extreme right-­wing and fascist movements arose: the Nazis in Germany and
Austria, Mussolini’s Fascists in Italy, the Ustashi in Croatia, the Iron Guard in
Romania, Francisco Franco in Spain, the Rexist movement in Belgium, the
Salazar regime in Portugal, the “whites” in Finland, imperial militarists in Japan,
the Blue Shirt Society in China, the Al-­Muthanna Club in Iraq, Salgado’s Bra-
zilian Integralism in Brazil, the Red Shirts in Mexico, the Chilean Popular
Freedom Alliance, and many other groups.
World War II, which ended the Great Depression, was fundamentally a war
against fascism. The defeat of fascism discredited right-­wing political and eco-
nomic theory and heralded a period of relatively progressive political and eco-
nomic policy in the postwar years. In addition, the collapse of the colonial system
during the postwar period created new opportunities for nationalist movements
in Africa and Asia. Many of these movements were led by highly educated
minorities who spoke one or more local varieties, a regional lingua franca (e.g.,
Kiswahili in East Africa), and a colonial language, often learned during a period
of education in the colonial center (e.g., Ho Chi Minh in France; see Nguyên
Van Ky, 1997).Virtually no political movements after 1945 – either in Europe,
Asia, or Latin America, or in the many revolutions ending colonialism – seriously
supported unrestricted free-­market capitalism. Rather, it was widely agreed that
government intervention was necessary to avoid the sort of economic catastrophe
for which interwar capitalism was responsible. Moreover, economic growth after
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   21

1945 was sufficient that corporate profits could be sustained along with steady
improvements in the standard of living for the working class and middle class in
many countries. Many of the newly independent states that emerged with the
end of colonialism also experienced some of the benefits of this period of eco-
nomic growth. An important outcome of this period during the three decades
following World War II was rapid expansion of secondary and higher education,
including dramatically improved access for working-­class children, as well as
increasing use of explicit language policies in education.
Beginning in the 1970s, however, the world economic and political systems
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entered a period of crisis from which they have not emerged; in fact, the crisis
has intensified since 2000. This crisis is reminiscent of the problems during the
period between the two world wars: mass unemployment, rapidly increasing
economic inequality, and severe economic downturns. In such circumstances,
politics have been increasingly characterized by personality and demagoguery;
by hostility to foreigners, ethnolinguistic minorities, and other “outsiders”; and
by the destruction of formal systems of support for the working class (such as
labor unions and labor parties).
The inability of nation-­states to respond to this crisis is one reason for the
weakening of the institutions of the nation-­state. Another factor is the growing
dominance of multinational corporations, whose power to control the economy
now surpasses that of even the most powerful nation-­states. In the economy,
globalization means the development of a transnational system characterized by
corporations with no specific territorial base and therefore no nation-­state to set
limits on corporate actions; and with these multinationals depending on offshore
(i.e., unregulated) finance, nation-­states have largely lost control of their
exchange rates and money supply. The result is a capitalist economy that is
mostly free of nation-­state control.
As many analysts have pointed out, a key innovation of this transnational
system is evident in manufacturing, in which production is divided among
several sites worldwide. This crucial innovation depends above all on the
revolution in communication technology. As transnational corporations move
their activities to wherever they are able to maximize profit (e.g., raw materials
gathered in Congo, processed into parts in China, assembled in Thailand, and
marketed in Singapore), a single, overarching language becomes increasingly
useful, especially among executives and mid-­level managers who may be trans-
ferred internationally several times in a career. The rise of English, therefore, is
an important efficiency on which this system depends.
But the spread of English is not the only language-­related consequence of
economic globalization. The movement of specific corporate functions any-
where that offers well-­educated and/or low-­wage employees without the regu-
latory framework that protects workers in the old states of Europe and North
America has resulted in the rise of city-­states and mini-­states (e.g., Singapore,
Hong Kong, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain) and special economic zones where many
22   J. W. Tollefson

of the laws and regulations of the nation-­state do not apply (e.g., Export
Processing Zones in Bangladesh; the Canary Islands Special Economic Zone;
Free Economic Zones in South Korea; Ecozones in the Philippines; Shenzhen
and other Special Economic Zones in China; the Karachi Export Processing
Zone in Pakistan; Special Economic Zones in Zambia). The new economy thus
offers opportunities for small national groups to carve out a niche in the trans-
national economy. Along with other historical factors (especially the collapse of
the Soviet Union and of the communist-­socialist alternative to global capital-
ism), the result is new ethnolinguistic nationalist movements that have prolifer-
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ated since the early 1990s, each claiming its right to a (small) state territory. The
spread of ethnolinguistic nationalism and the breakup of larger states help the
multinationals. As Hobsbawm (1994) wryly observes, “The most convenient
world for multinational giants is one populated by dwarf states or no states at
all” (p. 281).
Yet globalization entails more than the transformation of the world economy
and the political units that organize governance; and the rise of ethnolinguistic
nationalism occurs not solely because it serves the interests of global capitalism.
Globalization entails important social changes as well (at times resulting in
intense and even violent reactions against globalization). Among the most
important of these social changes are migration, the triumph of urban over rural
life, and the explosive demand for workers with secondary and higher educa-
tion. All of these social changes have profound consequences for language pol-
icies in education.
The migration of labor internally within countries around the world has
been one of the most important social changes in the past generation. This
migration has been overwhelmingly from the countryside to the cities. Interna-
tional migration has been significant as well, though limited by the reluctance of
most nation-­states to permit unrestricted flows of migrants (though other forms
of capital flows are largely unrestricted).
Migration has meant that the number of farmers and other rural dwellers
worldwide has plummeted. In Japan, for example, the proportion of the popu-
lation involved in farming declined from 52.4% in 1947 to 9.0% in 1985, while
even in relatively less developed areas such as North Africa, the agricultural
population dropped from two-­thirds to only a fifth of the population by 1990
(FAO, 1989; ILO, 1990). Similar, though somewhat less spectacular, has been
the decline in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Remarkably, outside of China
and India a majority of the world’s population was urbanized by the 1980s
(United Nations Department of International Economic and Social Affairs,
1984). This hollowing out of rural life is accompanied by rapid language loss
and language shift, particularly the loss of local language varieties and the acqui-
sition of urban lingua francas and languages used in schools.
Another major social change has been the rapid growth in the number of
jobs requiring some level of education. As farming employed fewer and fewer
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   23

people, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide abandoned rural life for
the cities, available employment increasingly required literacy and other skills
normally gained through schooling. Moreover, as more and more countries
adopted policies of universal primary education, the number of schools increased
dramatically worldwide, along with the proportion of the population enrolled
in schools. For example, in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom com-
bined, before World War II there were only about 150,000 university students
(about 0.10% of the total population), but by 2008 the total had reached 6.74
million in just these three countries (Eurostat, 2008). Much of this growth had
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occurred by the 1980s, when students made up 2.5–3.0% of the population, not
only in Europe but in economically less developed countries such as the Philip-
pines and Ecuador (Burloiu, 1983).
These massive social changes have important consequences for language and
language policies. Most obviously, migration to cities means that rural language
varieties are lost, replaced by urban varieties spoken by the middle class, military
officers, and government functionaries. In addition, regional lingua francas and
new varieties of former colonial languages, which are clustered in cities but
rarely in rural agricultural areas, become increasingly important for intergroup
communication in multilingual cities and as media of instruction in urban
schools. As new categories of work proliferate in the service industries, business,
the government bureaucracy, and international aid agencies, family varieties are
sacrificed, often being replaced rapidly by languages of the capital, the region,
or international business. New forms of multilingualism become commonplace,
including new varieties such as pidgins and local varieties of English or regional
lingua francas, as well as widespread code mixing and code switching. However,
intense competition for places in schools and for the new jobs that require liter-
acy and varying levels of fluency in English and other colonial and regional lan-
guages often leads to violence and the repression of minorities, with language
policies in education becoming a key mechanism in systems of repression. All of
these changes undermine traditional social structures of rural life, including
family and kinship systems. Because the maintenance of most languages depends
on transmission within families (Fishman, 2000), as individuals migrate to cities
and to other countries in search of education and employment, the central insti-
tution for language maintenance – the extended family – may be destroyed,
replaced instead by the regulatory framework of language policies in educational
systems that increasingly serve the interests of global capitalism (Spring, 2006).
Thus, essential processes of global capitalism – migration, urbanization, and
the transformation of work – have undermined the social basis for the mainte-
nance of local language varieties. But just as importantly, globalization also
undermines the foundation for many national languages. As nation-­states lose
their economic and political power, individuals respond by adapting to the
imperatives of the new power: global corporations, which require English, liter-
acy, and other skills. Thus, we see deep concern for the future of national
24   J. W. Tollefson

l­anguages even in nation-­states with apparently secure varieties that are univer-
sally learned in childhood (e.g., Japan; see Hashimoto, this volume, Chapter 9).
To understand language policies in education, therefore, we must understand
this profound sense of insecurity about the future of national languages and their
associated national identities among peoples who believe their histories are
expressed in, and inextricably bound up with, those languages.
Ultimately, with globalization the notion of the “speech community” – a
central metaphor of European nationalism – is undermined, being replaced not
by an alternative community but instead by the concept of a global identity.
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Many terms have been proposed for this new identity (or identities), such as
“cosmopolitan,” “postmodern,” and “global” (see Makoni & Pennycook,
2007), but the key point is that these new forms of identity – distinct from tra-
ditional conceptions of “national” identity – are highly variable, fluid, and
deeply individual rather than collective. Of course, all forms of identity are
fundamentally social, and no individual is wholly isolated from social groups,
but globalization has undermined identities based on geography and face-­to-face
interaction. In the words of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher,
“There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and
there are families.” Thus, globalization must be understood as a profoundly
non-­nationalist, even anti-­nationalist, process, not only as an economic system
but also in its associated discourses and ideologies.
In response, individuals around the world have asserted various forms of
identity politics, including nostalgia movements (e.g., 1980s Reaganite patriot-
ism in the United States), ethnolinguistic nationalism (e.g., in Hungary, Yugo-
slavia, and India), and militant ethno-­religious fundamentalism (e.g.,
anti-­modernist Christian fundamentalism in Nigeria and the United States). Yet
such movements have offered neither effective and satisfying alternative forms
of identity, nor a coherent set of policies to counter the overwhelming domina-
tion of global capitalism. Rather, such identity movements are instead “cries for
help . . . for some ‘community’ to belong to in an anomic world; some family to
belong to in a world of social isolates; some refuge in the jungle” of global
capitalism (Hobsbawm, 1994, p. 342).
But what about the rise of English as a global language? Does not English
offer the foundation for a new global community, based on a common language?
The English language is triumphalist (Pennycook, 2007) in the sense that it is
widely viewed as universally available for all and not restricted by any link
between language and nation, despite clear evidence that access to English is
associated with economic class and other structural factors (Tollefson, 1989,
1991). Yet this apparently integrating sociolinguistic phenomenon also leads to
fragmentation, most notably in the rise of new varieties of English (see Hoffmann
& Siebers, 2009). Moreover, the dominance of English undermines hundreds,
perhaps even thousands, of languages on which communities depend worldwide.
The Internet, the Web and virtual reality are inadequate replacements for human
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   25

communities; they are components in an imagined world of global communica-

tion, a virtual world – not a world of human verbal interaction. Moreover,
expansion of the Internet has taken place in recent years largely in languages
other than English. What unites the Internet and the Web is not English or the
narrow, limited forms of communication they permit across geographical and
cultural boundaries, but merely accessibility: Those individuals who are suffi-
ciently wealthy to have Internet access are connected by the privilege of access
to Google, Facebook, and other online media, not by language or by complex
communicative interaction. In fact, as Coronel-­Molina (2007) shows, new media
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may provide greater opportunity for the maintenance and revival of threatened
languages than for the development of a unified global community.
In other words, despite its power to threaten and destroy languages that have
formed the basis for local and national identities, the spread of English does not
mean the triumph of a single, unifying global standard or a “community” in any
meaningful sense. Instead, despite the ideological claim of global capitalism that
all human beings are linked electronically through technology and English, glo-
balization entails a fragmenting ideology of multiple, fluid, changing, and radic-
ally individual identities, often brought into the service of capitalism. As we
shall see in this volume, language policies everywhere must confront the funda-
mental processes that are the result: language loss, the dominance and the frag-
mentation of English, language shift, and the collapse – and reformulation – of
the linguistic foundation of social groups that have long provided a sense of
identity and belonging.

Changing Paradigms in Language Policy Research

I turn now to the implications for research of these new issues in language
policy. What forms of research can be used to investigate the profound transfor-
mations in language policy brought about by global changes in the economy,
politics and culture? This question focuses our attention on methods and con-
ceptual frameworks in language policy research.
As a special area within language studies, the scholarly study of language
policy has developed its own conceptual frameworks for understanding the pol-
icymaking process in various social contexts. These frameworks include (among
others) the distinction between formulation, implementation, and evaluation
(Rubin, Jernudd, Das Gupta, Fishman, & Ferguson, 1977); status, corpus, and
acquisition planning (Cooper, 1989; Haugen, 1959; Kloss, 1968); cost–benefit
analysis versus interpretive policy analysis (Grin, 2006; Yanow, 2000); various
versions of top-­down and bottom-­up policymaking (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997);
the ecology of language (Haugen, 1972/2001; Mühlhäusler, 1996); and govern-
mentality (Foucault, 1991; Moore, 2002; Pennycook, 2002). As has been widely
noted, this range of conceptual frameworks has proved to be highly productive
for our growing understanding of language policies in society, but it does not
26   J. W. Tollefson

constitute a “theory” of language policy (Ricento, 2006; Williams, 1992). These

diverse conceptual frameworks are characterized instead by the division between
a relatively deterministic “historical-­structural approach” that emphasizes social
structure, and a “public sphere” approach that emphasizes the creative agency of
individuals and communities. This paradigmatic split in the field has important
implications for research methods in language policy and planning.

Historical-­Structural and Public Sphere Research in Language

Policy
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Until the 2000s, language policy research could be divided into two broad
periods, each with its own central research questions, methodologies, and con-
ceptual frameworks (see Blommaert, 1996; Tollefson, 1991, 2010). Research
within the first period, beginning with early language policy studies in the 1960s
and early 1970s (Das Gupta, 1970; Fishman, 1968, 1972b, 1974; Fishman, Fer-
guson, & Das Gupta, 1968; Haugen, 1966; Rubin and Jernudd, 1971), has been
called the “neoclassical approach” (Tollefson, 1991), “classical language plan-
ning” (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997), and the “autonomous model” (Street, 1993).
Research within the neoclassical approach was characterized by a focus on lan-
guage policies of the nation-­state, particularly education ministries of central
governments. In multilingual states such as Tanzania and Kenya in East Africa,
Indonesia in Southeast Asia, and India in South Asia, for example, national
authorities faced decisions about medium of instruction, the language(s) of text-
books and materials in schools, and second/third language-­teaching programs.
Among early scholars, it was widely believed that technical expertise should be
the basis for making such language policy decisions. Individual learners and
communities were rarely consulted, or were the focus of attention mainly when
they created difficulties for the implementation of state policies. The optimistic
assumption within much of this early research was that state language policies
could have a significant beneficial impact on language communities, particularly
in providing a basis for sociocultural integration and for economic moderniza-
tion and development. Thus, two major assumptions of the neoclassical
approach were (1) that the nation-­state should be the focus of language planning
activities, primarily for the purposes of development and modernization; and (2)
that technical rather than political solutions to language problems should be
developed by language specialists, who were usually not members of the com-
munities affected by language policy decisions.
Beginning in the 1990s, language policy research entered a new period
increasingly characterized by a focus on power, inequality, and the impact of
coercive policies on language learning and language behavior. This research,
termed the “historical-­structural approach” (Tollefson, 1991) or the “ideological
model” (Street, 1993), was influenced by critical theory, Marxist and neo-­
Marxist analysis, and research on imperialism within various world domination
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   27

paradigms (Phillipson, 1992). The approach falls within the broad field of crit-
ical language study, which since the 1990s has been one of the most rapidly
growing and dynamic areas of language studies (see Pennycook, 2001). Like
neoclassical research, the historical-­structural approach focuses on state policies
and institutions, but with a difference: Language policies are viewed as mechan-
isms for creating and sustaining systems of inequality that benefit wealthy and
powerful individuals, groups, institutions, and nation-­states, as well as for resist-
ing systems of inequality (see Tollefson, 1995). By and large, researchers within
the historical-­structural approach, as well as related frameworks in critical lan-
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guage studies (e.g., critical pedagogy), assume that language policies are an
important mechanism for the unequal distribution of economic resources and
political power.
More recently, the historical-­structural approach has been criticized for its
continuing focus on the state. Johnson (2007), for example, argues that the
approach focuses too much attention on ministries of education, state-­funded
schools, official curricula, and official policy statements. Arguing that historical-­
structural research emphasizes top-­down planning and policymaking, critics
believe that greater attention should be paid to the local decisions of individual
language users, teachers, parents, administrators, and communities. Much of this
criticism of historical-­structural research entails discomfort with its relatively
deterministic point of view. For example, Abu-­Lughod (1975) complains that it
treats human beings like iron filings, controlled by forces that leave little space
for creative choice. The criticism is that historical-­structural research overstates
the degree to which language learners and language users are coerced into par-
ticular patterns of language acquisition, language loss, and language use by
powerful external forces that control the policymaking process. In contrast,
recent research emphasizes creative opportunities for decision making by indi-
viduals and communities. With this renewed emphasis on communities rather
than policies, researchers have increasingly turned to ethnography as a major
research method in language policy research (e.g., McCarty, 2010).
Thus, criticisms of the historical-­structural approach have led to a new direc-
tion in language policy research that emphasizes agency rather than structure –
that is, the potential for individuals and groups to resist, undermine, and alter
the trajectory of language policies adopted for the benefit of powerful groups.
This new direction pays less attention to the state and interstate conflict, and
more attention to the margins and borders of states, regions, and communities;
less attention to ethnolinguistic groups and more attention to hybrid and mul-
tiple identities; less attention to nationalism and more attention to cosmopolitan
citizenship; less attention to the sources of social conflict and more attention to
mobilities and networks; less attention to the power of corporate capitalism and
more attention to alternative media and community organizations; and less
attention to the dominance of English and more attention to the rise of new
language varieties (including new varieties of English).
28   J. W. Tollefson

This new direction, characterized by a relatively optimistic belief in the

power and agency of individuals and communities, is influenced by a diffuse
body of research in cultural studies, anthropology, and globalization studies. Its
emphasis on community organization and communication, on alternative
media, and on the fluid and ever-­changing relationships among communities,
policymakers, and institutions of all kinds can be traced to Habermas’s “public
sphere” (1982), an idealized (and problematic) notion of an open space – a
commons – available for discussion of issues of common concern. The term
“public sphere” captures the notion of public processes, of the working out of
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policies through everyday practices within communities (cf. communities of

discourse; Swales, 1990), as distinct from the formulation and implementation
of policies, which in historical-­structural research include the tasks, programs,
and practices of policymakers and their institutions.
Whereas Habermas proposed an idealized, singular, rational public sphere in
which race, class, and gender are largely absent (see Lin, 2010), more useful is a plu-
ralistic view proposed by his critics (see Crossley & Roberts, 2004) in which “mul-
tiple, frequently non-­rational, and often contestatory public spheres” coexist ( Jacobs,
2000, p. 3). While a dominant public sphere is often maintained by state authorities,
large national media, and other powerful forces, there are also many smaller public
spheres, some of which (e.g., the African-­American press in the United States) help
form “subaltern counterpublics” that provide counter-­hegemonic discourses chal-
lenging the discourse of the dominant public sphere (Gegeo & Watson-­Gegeo,
2002). Many researchers working within this paradigm offer an optimistic vision of
the potential for creative action within communities, in a metaphorical space of dis-
cussion, negotiation, and compromise that can be sustained despite coercive, top-­
down language policies, in part through modern communications media that have
expanded the range of the public sphere (Jacobs, 2000).
Thus, we find in language policy research today a division between an
emphasis on the relatively deterministic historical-­structural paradigm and on
the relatively creative public sphere paradigm. The former emphasizes the
important role of social structure (particularly class, as well as race and gender)
in shaping and constraining language policies in schools, whereas, in contrast,
the public sphere paradigm emphasizes the agency of all actors in the policy-
making process, particularly their ability to alter what seem to be the coercive
and deterministic trajectories of class-­based policymaking bodies and other insti-
tutional forms and structures. (For a review of the agency–structure debate in
language research, see Ahearn, 2001.) In a sense, therefore, the rise of the rela-
tively optimistic public sphere research constitutes an implicit critique of the
pessimism of historical-­structural research.
The difference between these two paradigms is not theoretical but instead a
matter of emphasis, focus, or perhaps even the temperament of different
researchers. In fact, historical-­structural and public sphere approaches may co-­
occur in a single body of research (see McCarty, 2010 and this volume, Chapter
Language Policy in a Time of Crisis   29

13). Nevertheless, the difference points to crucial questions for research: Under
what conditions are the state and other powerful institutions (e.g., corporations
and non-­governmental organizations) able to impose their will on individuals
and communities through language policies? Under what conditions can indi-
viduals and communities act as agents in their own language learning and lan-
guage use?
These questions are implicit in all of the chapters in this book. Annamalai,
for example, emphasizes the central role of economic factors in India in shaping
the options for national language policies and the decisions of individual lan-
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guage learners (Chapter 10). Mazrui, in Chapter 7, examines the coercive effects
of the colonial legacy on language policy in Kenya, as well as reasons for recent
efforts to reshape policies for language learning and language use. In Chapter 4,
Wiley reviews the powerful social and political forces affecting the history of
language policies in the United States, including their impact on individual lan-
guage users. What unites this research is a search for the underlying historical
and structural factors that shape and constrain language learning and language
use among communities and individuals.
In contrast, Johnson’s analysis in Chapter 6 of the impact of the federal edu-
cation law known as No Child Left Behind in the Philadelphia public schools
emphasizes individual variation in the appropriation of federal policies. In
Chapter 12, Gegeo and Watson-­Gegeo’s analysis of Malaitans in Solomon
Islands during the recent period of violence and civil conflict explores the
capacity of individual parents, students, and teachers to develop creative solu-
tions to educational challenges. In her analysis of language planning among
youth in Native American communities (Chapter 13), McCarty draws explicitly
on the theoretical framework of the New Language Policy Studies, which focus
not on policy statements and programs, but on language policy “as a situated
sociocultural process” (McCarty, Collins, & Hopson, 2011, p.  335) involving
complex and changing relationships among individuals, communities, and insti-
tutions. Freeland, acknowledging the legacy of colonialism and national politics,
explores rights-­oriented language policies and the capacity of multilingual com-
munities to affect language policies and politics on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast
(Chapter 5). What unites these chapters is their emphasis on the capacity for
creative action that is possible even within educational contexts characterized by
tight constraints on individuals’ actions. Throughout the chapters in this book,
we see this tension between the historical-­structural and public sphere para-
digms – between the coercive forces of the state and other powerful institutions
and the creative potential of individuals and their communities. Therefore, we
see as well a range of research methods, including those appropriate to the
historical-­structural approach and ethnographic (and other qualitative) research
methods appropriate to the public sphere paradigm.
30   J. W. Tollefson

Conclusion
In the first edition of Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues, Donahue
(2002) drew attention to the important role that critical linguists can play in the
processes of democracy. In his view, critical linguists and language policy spe-
cialists must aggressively analyze policies, identify and characterize the under-
lying ideologies, and provide critical analysis of the effects of those policies on
communities. Only in this way can language policy specialists contribute to
what Donohue calls an informed, cerebral, and skeptical citizenry, which is the
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foundation for democratic political systems.

Critical linguists have a similarly important role to play in the enormous
challenges facing humanity today: growing economic inequality; environmental
crisis; ethnic and national conflict; intense international insecurity and violence;
politics dominated by personality and demagoguery; religious fundamentalism
and neo-­fascism, with their associated hostility to “outsiders” such as migrants
and ethnolinguistic minorities; and the destruction of institutional support for
the poor and working class. Too often, such problems are met with state viol-
ence and restrictions on human rights. Alternatively, humanity must engage in a
coordinated international effort to confront these problems and to devise solu-
tions that address the interests of peoples worldwide. Of necessity, this effort
must be multilingual, multiethnic, and multinational in order to accommodate
the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences that are at the heart of social,
political and military conflicts worldwide. Critical linguists can do their share by
understanding the processes by which social, economic, and political inequality
are created, masked, and sustained, as well as how language policies may under-
mine hierarchical systems and offer instead a wider range of life options for
speakers of all language varieties. It is with the hope that this process of reducing
inequality and seeking greater social justice can be successful that this collection
is offered.

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3
MULTIPLE ACTORS AND ARENAS
IN EVOLVING LANGUAGE
POLICIES
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Mary McGroarty

In recent decades, scholars have identified more actors and environments rele-
vant to language policy and planning (LP) and thus promoted contemporary
awareness that LP endeavors are far more complex and dynamic than the models
of the 1950s through 1980s could capture. This contemporary understanding,
based on the important foundational work in LP that took place after World
War II as refined and challenged by later critiques of applied linguists and other
social scientists dissatisfied with both the explanatory adequacy and the predictive
power of LP theory and research, can generate new insights for researchers and
practitioners involved in LP activities in many settings (Ricento, 2000; Tollefson,
2010). Lo Bianco’s (2010) review notes that the models of language planning
that emerged in the post-­World War II period tended to present related endeav-
ors as an objective science amenable to mechanistic representations, and thus
oversimplified solution processes, despite the fluid and dynamic conditions to
which they are applied. In contrast, he defines language planning as “a situated
activity, whose specific history and local circumstances influence what is regarded
as a language problem, and whose political dynamics determine which language
problems are given policy treatment” (p. 152). The purpose of this chapter is to
elucidate this more complex contemporary understanding of LP, discuss selected
aspects of recent related LP research, done mainly in the United States, concen-
trating on the area of educational LP (still a dominant focus, although it is far
from the sole arena of consequence), and show how it exemplifies several social
science trends. The goal is to improve awareness, introduce findings of current
research in a variety of areas relevant to educational LP particularly, raise ques-
tions, and suggest directions for theory building and research that interested
readers can use as guides for analysis and action. Although examples will come
principally from the US educational environment, they will be presented with
36   M. McGroarty

sufficient detail to enable readers to determine the extent of their relevance to

other settings.
The traditional focus for much LP activity on public education continues;
issues of long concern in educational LP such as medium of instruction remain
relevant and often contested in the United States and elsewhere (Tollefson &
Tsui, 2004). Public educational programs manifest a country’s hopes for its col-
lective future, and thus provide key evidence of the abilities, values, attitudes,
and skills, both essential and optimal, required for social and economic success
and personal fulfillment (Lo Bianco, 2008a; Nussbaum, 2010, 2011a, 2011b;
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Reich, 2002). The type of government (autocratic, democratic, or other) and

degree and type of professional and lay involvement in education vary greatly
across, and sometimes within, nations (McGroarty, 2008), as does the level of
resources available to support education. Along with the historic patterns of
access and participation, these structural differences affect the extent and nature
of education offered at all levels. At the outset, then, let us stipulate that educa-
tional language policies remain a central concern. At the same time, though, in
order to understand the multiplicity of forces affecting them, it is essential to
enumerate the other actors and environments, macro-­level processes, and
national and local trends and tensions pertinent to educational LP. It should be
emphasized that many of these have been recognized by scholars for many years;
they demand enumeration in this chapter because, to varying degrees, they
demonstrate the complex social and political configurations that have ongoing
but locally and temporally varied effects on education generally and on language
education, in both native and later-­acquired languages.

Actors and Arenas Potentially Relevant to LP

What are some of the many arenas pertinent for LP activities identified in
current research? Spolsky (2009) provides an extensive catalog of domains for
“language management,” one of the areas that figures in his tripartite division of
language policy (that is, language-­related beliefs, or ideologies; language prac-
tices, or what people actually do with language; and language management, the
conscious and explicit efforts to control the language choices and uses; Spolsky,
2004). Using Fishman’s notion of a sociolinguistic domain (the systematic co-­
occurrence of a typical location, the participants who interact therein, the topics
for talk and the literacy artifacts found in this location, and participants who
interact in this situation), Spolsky outlines the language management issues rele-
vant to the domains of the family, religious organizations, workplaces, public
linguistic space, legal and health institutions, schools, the military, government
operations at the local, regional, and national levels, international and supra­
national organizations, and specialized language management agencies. He con-
cludes that, for the most part, explicit efforts to manage language in these
domains have produced mixed results that often favor monolingual hegemony
Multiple Actors and Arenas   37

over pluralism and multilingualism; totalitarian regimes, able to use coercive

methods of control, have been more capable of implementing choices than
“democracies wondering how to harmonize communicative efficiency with
freedom” (2009, pp. 260–261). Shohamy (2006) uses an even more expansive
definition of “languaging,” including the domains above and all modes of social
signifying and identity marking, including, for example, clothing, music, food
practices, and architecture, observing that all of these have communicative func-
tion and thus are implicated in language practices and policies.
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Dynamics of Globalization, Public–Private Balance, and Power

Before we examine the effects of multiple actors and diverse out-­of-school
environments on educational LP, it is essential to note three other macro factors
at play in all domains mentioned here: globalization, shifting conceptions of
public as against private rights and responsibilities, and notions of power. Each
of these has multiple implications for all areas of social and political life, for edu-
cation generally, and for language education.

Globalization
Greater globalization, the increased movement of peoples, goods, capital, and
information, is prominent among the historical circumstances and dynamic
reali­ties now affecting language policy and planning, education, and language
learning and teaching. While there is no single definition of globalization, John
Berry, a psychologist whose career has been devoted to the study of intercul-
tural contact and adjustment, explains that it involves a multiplicity of linkages
that transcend nation-­states and constitute “a complex process . . . through
which events, decisions, and activities in one part of the world can come to
have significant consequences for individuals and communities” elsewhere
(2008, p. 329). His research and that of many other scholars (e.g., Aleinikoff &
Klusmeyer, 2000; Louie, 2004; Sassen, 2001, 2007; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-
Orozco, 2001; Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008; Tollefson,
this volume, Chapter 2) shows that participation in various forms of intercul-
tural contact precipitated by globalization has a variety of outcomes for indi-
viduals and groups; there is no single pattern of effects. Kumaravadivelu’s (2008)
consideration of the cultural, educational, and linguistic impact of globalization
corroborates its multiple, variable, and often idiosyncratic connections with
individual and communal language attitudes and behaviors and, consequently,
the multiple possible influences (or lack thereof ) on formal education, including
language learning. For decades, economic and political trends favoring out-
sourcing in the manufacturing and service sectors have also promoted wide-
spread English study overseas in hopes of achieving economic gain (Friginal,
2007; Rahman, 2009). Some uses of consumer-­oriented technologies that began
38   M. McGroarty

in the United States and Europe, too, such as ATMs, have rapidly spread around
the globe without being particularly linked with the English of the United
States or United Kingdom (Marling, 2006). In many, if not most, global con-
texts, greater proficiency in English appears to be linked discursively with access
to relatively better employment opportunities in the local economy rather than
with any special loyalty to American or British political and social mores
(Kumaravadivelu, 2008; McKay & Bokhorst-­Heng, 2008).

Shifting Visions of and Venues for Public and Private

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Endeavor
The globalizing forces of the 21st century are proceeding in a political landscape
very different from that of most of the 20th century. Sociologist Paul Starr
explains that most of the 20th century, from the inception of World War I
through the Cold War, was shaped by “total war, global depression, and a pro-
tracted confrontation between nuclear-­armed alliances” that provided the
context for development of liberal states (2007, p.  117). Power dynamics
changed dramatically with the collapse of the socialist bloc at the end of the
century; while Western powers experienced “an understandable sense of relief ”
at this turn of events, the demise of the Western socialist alliances also led “to a
triumphalist certainty, especially on the right, about history’s ultimate destina-
tion” (p. 182). For American free-­market conservatives, Starr notes, “the social-
ist collapse [was] proof of the endemic incompetence of the state” (p. 182).
So certain were the proponents of this view, and so scarce, diffuse, and rela-
tively invisible in the public media eye their opponents (at least prior to the
Occupy Wall Street movement), that soon “the single, overriding political imper-
ative in the world, east and west, was to roll back the state, whether that involved
privatizing the economy of Russia or Social Security in the United States” (p.
183). Hence, in the late 1980s and early 1990s enormous international political
momentum coalesced around the project of limiting state power and, often, trans-
ferring many state functions as well as revenues partially or fully to the private
sector, a stunning change from twentieth-­century liberalism, which had “always
been concerned with building effective and trustworthy public institutions” (p.
183). Because this momentum arose with a change from socialism to some form
of electoral democracy, the achievement of democratic rule was conflated with
the desirability of a shrinking state sector, in part because of the legacy of “deep
cynicism about the state that undercut the efforts to build well-­functioning
markets as well as new democratic institutions” (p. 183), both of which were
sorely needed in the wake of the demise of a centralized state system.
Starr emphasizes that in these years, many intellectuals and journalists need-
lessly truncated a fuller exploration of alternative conceptions of the appropriate
balance between public and private endeavors, so that, “rather than referring to
‘liberal democracy,’ most writers and politicians just spoke of ‘democracy’ as if
Multiple Actors and Arenas   39

no other kind was possible” (2007, p. 182). The communist/socialist collapse

shifted the mental map of American politics in a particular way: where, for-
merly, liberalism had been understood as a genuinely centrist position, with
conservatism to the right and socialism to the left, many Americans now under-
stood and “used the term ‘liberal’ as a synonym for ‘left’ ” (p. 185). While these
ideological shifts were occurring in American politics, however, a different sort
of political and structural change was taking place in Europe, where the planned
transmutation of the European Common Market into the European Union
established “a European liberal order on a continental scale [that] has been the
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quiet, underappreciated revolution of our time” (p. 191). Although establish-

ment of the European Union started as an elite project, one met with popular
consent rather than wide acclaim in most member states, it has proceeded in
such a way as to create a Europe more truly liberal than at any time since World
War I, eliminating customs barriers across member states, establishing a single
currency, taking over “such critical matters as environmental, agricultural, and
competition policy,” and beginning to take over foreign relations and defense
(p. 192). Although under pressure in the current environment of economic
uncertainty, the process of establishing what Starr calls “pooled sovereignty” has
proceeded systematically: step by step, integration has spilled over from one area
into another, and, in the face of competitive pressures from the United States
and East Asia, the leaders of the major European states have repeatedly decided
that their national interest lies not in pulling back but in pushing economic and
political integration forward (p. 193).
Moreover, the ideal of a common European citizenship has now been real-
ized in some areas of practice, such as freedom of travel within member states
for EU citizens. In addition, the many areas of educational cooperation and
exchange, such as in programs for language learning and teaching, and in the
protection and revitalization of “small” languages, testify to the expansive and
inclusive vision of educational policymakers (van Els, 2000). Thus, while the
meaning of “liberalism” has in effect changed in the United States since the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union in such a way that both rhetoric and practice have
promoted alterations in public–private balance, favoring the latter, the growing
reach of the European Union, considered both geographically and with respect
to domains involved, presents an emerging model of a “hybrid . . . social-­market
liberalism” (Starr, p. 192), very much a mainstream movement favoring creation
of common wealth across borders and promotion of the study of multiple lan-
guages. These contrasting visions have implications for educational policies,
including a wide range of educational language matters.

“Hard” and “Soft” Power to Affect Outcomes

Individuals, communities, and nations implicated in the processes of globaliza-
tion and shifting realms of public/private effort differ in many ways, notably but
40   M. McGroarty

not only in their power to affect processes and outcomes. Lo Bianco’s (2010)
and Tollefson’s (2010) characterizations of LP demonstrate that language pol-
icies, like policies in political, military, and commercial enterprises, are now
recognized as increasingly contingent, dynamic, and multilateral. These are pre-
cisely the characteristics of power relationships shaped by various constellations
of “hard” and “soft” power outlined by scholar, government official, and diplo-
mat Joseph Nye (2010). In formulating the nature of power that will shape the
actions of individuals, governments, and international agencies in years to come,
Nye notes that classical definitions of power were based on a country’s control
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of resources (including physical, human, capital, enterprise, and technology)

along with its national performance (external constraints, infrastructure, ideas),
and how the combination of these factors determined military capability (p. 4).
But not all social issues and problems are equally amenable to military force.
Furthermore, in the latter half of the twentieth century, social scientists became
increasingly dissatisfied with this approach and began to elaborate behavioral,
relational approaches to power.
Nye contrasts the “power as resources” model with the “power as behavioral
outcomes” model; the latter sees power as “the ability to alter others’ behavior
to produce preferred outcomes” (2010, p. 10). He presents three faces of rela-
tional power: the ability to use threats or rewards to change another’s behavior
(coercive or command power); the ability to control the action agenda so that
the other’s choices are constrained (framing or agenda-­setting power); and the
ability to create and shape the beliefs, perceptions, and preferences of the other
(or soft power – that is, persuading the other, consciously or not, to share beliefs
and preferences) (p. 14). All three aspects of relational power continue to be
relevant to social environments; the latter two are particularly crucial because
they foreground the importance of social networks, a vital aspect of structural
power. The extent of such networks, the nature of communication within
them, whether they are characterized by strong or weak ties, and the existence
of gaps or holes in network communications all affect network strength and
level of trust within networks; these then affect the ability of those in networks
to work toward common goals, or “integrative power” (p. 17).
Hence, communication strategies become ever more crucial in affecting
ability to influence outcomes. Moreover, communications now consist not just
of words but of images as well; new technologies permitting faster communica-
tions as well as communications accomplished through a variety of media mean
that more individuals and groups have access to more types of information. The
ability to get all this information into a coherent narrative is one way to attract
belief and change behavior; as Nye observes, “In an information age, . . . out-
comes are shaped not merely by whose army wins but also by whose story
wins” (p. 19). In the past decade, a number of different narratives about learning
and teaching have gained remarkable prominence in the United States, and their
advocates have had substantial impact on areas such as school organization,
Multiple Actors and Arenas   41

evaluation of students and teachers, classroom materials, assessment, teacher

recruitment and preparation, and determination of educational quality. To
varying degrees, these narratives have influenced the teaching and evaluation of
native and additional languages.
We turn now to a consideration of the various stories emerging from and
about the sphere of education and language learning in order to explore how
the increased number of new actors and relevant arenas and differential salience
of the processes of globalization and power dynamics invoke strong commit-
ments and vigorous debates about appropriate aims and means of language
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learning as a keystone of educational LP. The discussion concentrates on LP in

American elementary and secondary education because recent reforms affect
larger numbers of learners and teachers, involve fundamental questions of school
governance and finances, and have generated more dissenting voices than is the
case in adult education, which similarly reflects the impact of globalization
(Burns & Roberts, 2010). This catalog of current controversies in American
general education and language education provides a point of departure that
readers may use for comparisons and contrasts with the factors at play in educa-
tional LP in their own circumstances.

American Insularity amid Global Enthusiasm for English

At the level of national discourse and, too often, practice, American public edu-
cation remains largely impervious to international enthusiasms for and invest-
ments in second/foreign language learning, except with respect to issues of
national security (Lo Bianco, 2008b). Contestations surrounding bilingual pro-
grams in the United States have surged, even as global efforts increase to provide
bilingual instruction and required instruction in foreign languages, particularly
but not only in English, to ever-­younger age levels (García, 2009; Nikolov &
Mihaljević Djigunović, 2011). While many trends related to globalization have
stoked enthusiasm for learning English, there has not been a comparable national
movement in the United States at large to promote mastery of multiple lan-
guages (although some locations do in fact demonstrate relatively stronger com-
mitment to learning languages other than English, as we shall see). The
international craze for English along with American linguistic insularity can be
seen as two sides of the same coin: the drive to convert education into a form of
high-­level training that will produce economically successful individuals. There
is, of course, nothing whatsoever amiss with expecting that education will con-
tribute to economic success, but to see that as the only goal of education threat-
ens not just a well-­rounded curriculum but the very meaning of an education.
In the words of philosopher and legal theorist Martha Nussbaum:

[W]hat we might call the humanistic aspects of science and social science
– the imaginative, creative aspect, and the aspect of rigorous critical
42   M. McGroarty

thought – are also losing ground as nations prefer to pursue short-­term

profit by the cultivation of the useful and highly applied skills suited to
profit-­making.
(2010, p. 2)

Her extended discussion of this trend asserts that, globally, countries in the
Americas, Europe, and Asia are caught up in contrasting visions of education,
one focused on “profit-­making” versus one that prepares graduates for “a more
inclusive type of world citizenship” (p. 7).
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Even prior to the present emphasis on the justification of education based

solely on the expectation of economic return, the United States has often been
seen to be characterized by a “social expectation of failure with respect to the
learning of languages other than English” (Reagan & Osborn, 2002, cited in
Larsen-­Freeman & Tedick, in preparation). Additionally, as school budgets
shrink, even as pressures grow to focus only on test scores in English language
and mathematics as determinants of individual student progress and school
quality, many local and state educational agencies have had to decrease oppor-
tunities for second language study (Moran, 2011; Ravitch, 2010). The political
rhetoric that emphasizes the need for American students to develop skills to
participate in a globalized economy largely restricts the scope of discussion to
technical skills in mathematics and science and the English-­language reading
abilities needed to comprehend such subjects. Unlike the years following the
successful launch of Sputnik, when federal efforts to improve education
included support for increased second language study and for promotion of
Russian specifically, in order to understand advances in science that were not
developed or reported in English, the only strategic promotion of foreign or
second language study in the aftermath of the Cold War has in general been
directed at languages implicated in national defense rather than at all languages
that might enhance global communication (Lo Bianco, 2008b). Contemporary
political arguments about the appropriate content of education thus neglect
areas such as the arts, history, additional languages, and study of literature (in
one’s native language or others) as a mode of developing an empathic imagina-
tion or acquisition of a second language in order to promote understanding of
other modes of human expression and experience across national and interna-
tional boundaries – educational goals prized by many academics (Nussbaum,
2010, 2011b; Reich, 2002).
Besides the widespread lack of interest in learning second languages because
of the expectation of failure, along with, in most localities, the sense that those
who speak English need not learn any other language, comes the fact that, in
their regular activities, many Americans live in a strikingly non-­diverse social
world. The recent economic recession has decreased in size the middle class; a
current study shows that, in the largest 117 metropolitan areas in the United
States, about 44% of families live in middle-­income neighborhoods, a marked
Multiple Actors and Arenas   43

decline from the 65% of such families in 1970, while approximately a third of
families live in affluence or poverty, more than double the 15% found in each
category in 1970 (Tavernise, 2011; Duncan & Murnane, 2011). Many work-
places in the United States, in and around large cities and, increasingly, in some
suburbs and small towns, are both segregated and internally stratified by race
and ethnicity (Waldinger & Lichter, 2003). Even if adults work in large com-
panies or organizations, the workmates they see every day are typically smaller
groups of individuals; entire aspects of a manufacturing operation or separate
shifts can be dominated by speakers of a language other than English, and the
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nature and pace of work mean that there is neither time nor incentive to learn
another language while on the job. If Americans are active practitioners of any
religious tradition, they are unlikely to belong to a racially or ethnically diverse
congregation (although there are some differences across major denominations;
see Putnam & Campbell, 2010). Although increasing economic, social, and
civic polarization by itself may not diminish interest in formal second language
study, it raises questions about opportunities for informal exposure to any lan-
guage other than English for members of the middle and upper classes, while
speakers of other languages may also be disadvantaged with respect to informal
exposure to English.
Still, at regional and local levels, in certain public school districts, and in
some private schools there has been historic and contemporary respect for and
dedication to language learning, often in conjunction with demographic factors
that sustain use of languages other than English (Crawford, 2004; García &
Bartlett, 2007; McCarty, this volume, Chapter 13). Most typical American
public education programs remain constrained by institutional inertia, a shrink-
ing resource base, and traditional ideologies favoring highly prescriptive
emphases on development of English – and “standard English” only – and
political pressures favoring a homogenized view of language and local
and national histories (Spring, 2010). Although scholars in the United States
and Canada have made persuasive arguments for the individual and social value
of mastering multiple languages (Carens, 2000; Nussbaum, 2006, 2011a; Reich,
2002), their expansive visions of what it means to be an educated individual
have, in much recent practice, lost out to an educational discourse based on
beliefs that reforms and modes of action drawn largely from the world of eco-
nomics and business are the only path to educational success. This emphasis has
even shaped instruction in Spanish as a heritage language for US learners, who
now find texts and curricula far more likely to emphasize acquisition of world
Spanish as a language of commerce rather than varieties of Spanish found in
various American communities (see Leeman & Martinez, 2007). We now turn
to one of the most important trends in American education, namely the frag-
mentation and privatization of schooling, and the narratives and related
counter-­narratives that have shaped this trend, and their possible implications
for educational LP.
44   M. McGroarty

Private, Public, and Public–Private Entities Serving Core

Educational Roles
Philosophical dissatisfaction with and distrust of public authorities, along with
ever-­tightening public budgets for education, mean that there are growing
resource gaps affecting the ability of schools to serve students, particularly but
not only students in less-­advantaged environments. Various influential actors,
both business elites and corporations, have thus found fertile ground for their
beliefs and, at times, for their products and services, some provided gratis
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(Molnar, Boninger, & Fogarty, 2011), others that come with substantial price
tags. While commercial involvement in education has occurred for decades in
many forms in many countries besides the United States (see, for example,
Kenway & Bullen, 2001), it has become far more pervasive in the wake of gov-
ernmental pressures on schools to demonstrate favorable outcomes for all types
of students through forms of assessment and evaluation demanding technical and
technological expertise beyond the capability of many local and even state edu-
cational agencies.
Before we discuss commercial involvement in some aspects of language edu-
cation, it is useful to sketch some of the factors that underlie the argument that
US public education is failing, and has been failing for decades (a contestable
proposition; see Rothstein, 1998), and the concurrent hope and expectation
that private-­sector entities are more likely to succeed. The linguist George
Lakoff (2006, 2008) presents an arresting interpretation of insights into political
beliefs arising from recent research in cognitive science (e.g., Westen, 2007). He
uses insights based on research into the rapid activation of neural networks in
different parts of the brain to form new integrated whole perceptions, created
when brain circuits bound together in simultaneous, connected activation. As
“binding sites” in the brain are repeatedly activated by similar experiences, their
functioning not only speeds up but actually creates new experiences (pp.
26–27). This unconscious functioning of neural networks allows humans to
make sense of a complex world by relying on a series of “frames” – predictable
scripts linking cause and effect – in perceiving and interpreting data. These
links, which are capable of producing positive or negative emotions, joy or
disgust, operate prior to and below the level of consciousness, rendering us
instantaneously capable of making social and political judgments which are rein-
forced each time they are accessed. Furthermore, favored frames “influence not
only what people think and feel about an issue but what they don’t think about
(Westen, 2007, p.  264), thus hindering ability to perceive the full picture.
Lakoff calls these frames based on neural binding the coherent “event struc-
tures” (2008, p. 26) that facilitate ready selection and interpretation of data and
enable immediate evaluations that can invoke positive or negative associations.
For many members of the American electorate, any mention of the public
sector evokes a negative association, while the private sector is imbued with
Multiple Actors and Arenas   45

positive expectations. In this perspective, Lakoff remarks, “[t]hings that aren’t

privatized and used for production have no value . . . as much as can be priva-
tized should be turned over for development” (2006, p. 70). In education, the
consequences of a privatization agenda for both framing basic issues and suggest-
ing related courses of action are substantial.
One of the unappreciated circumstances of contemporary US political and
economic reality is what Lakoff calls “privateering,” a process at work in many
recent developments in education as well as multiple other fields of endeavor
such as health care, disaster relief, the military, and, crucially for this discussion,
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education. Lakoff (2008) defines privateering as

a special case of privatization in which the capacity of government to

carry out critical moral missions is systematically destroyed from within
the government itself, while public funds are used to provide capital for
private corporations to take over those critical functions of government
and charge the public a great deal for doing so, while avoiding all
accountability.
(p. 133)

To the extent that American approaches are influential internationally, one

may expect to find instances of contemporary privateering in other countries as
well, but this discussion will concentrate only on its ramifications for US educa-
tion. Particularly in education, rhetorical arguments and legislative changes at
the state and national levels have been marshaled to build and maintain support
for educational reforms such as charter schools and online-­only schools that
have not served all children equally well.
Because of widespread dissatisfaction with and insufficiencies within public
institutions, including schools, many responsibilities, including universal public
instruction, formerly discharged mainly by public agencies have devolved to
various hybrids and combinations of public–private activity and support
(Sánchez, 2011). In the United States, these include phenomena such as the
growth of charter schools, alternative forms of teacher certification, and
business-­sponsored teaching materials and curricula, in addition to the growing
involvement of commercial publishers in several areas of curriculum and assess-
ment. All these developments have been discussed in detail by educational
researchers and scholars Larry Cuban (2007), Gene Glass (2008), and Diane
Ravitch (2010), and the analysis here owes much to their work. Furthermore,
although these forces might be expected to favor some sorts of diversity in
student populations and in definition and delivery of educational responsibilities
such as teacher selection and curricular planning, there has been a concurrent
explosion of emphasis on a single essential lever for improvement of learning,
namely high-­stakes standardized testing, the results of which are used to deter-
mine the adequacy of progress for all learners, including students with special
46   M. McGroarty

needs based on disabilities and those learning English as a second language

(Menken, 2008; Rothstein, Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2008). Each of these develop-
ments presents substantial challenges as well as some novel opportunities for lan-
guage education specifically and for genuinely democratic schooling more
generally.

Fragmentation of Instruction: Charter Schools and Other

Alternatives
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The proliferation of charter schools in the United States can be interpreted as

part of a process to “make public schools private” (Glass, 2008, p. 154; see also
Ravitch, 2010). (In the United States, a charter school can be formed by any
group of parents and teachers who present their justification and curricular plan
to their state department of education; requirements vary, but are, in general,
less stringent in such central areas as teacher certification and financial transpar-
ency. If approved, the charter school then receives the per-­pupil support that
would otherwise go to local public schools.) Notes Glass, an educational psy-
chologist and former president of the American Educational Research Associ-
ation, “Most of the proposals to solve the ‘education crisis’ in America have
about them the character of cost reduction or ‘choice,’ . . . rationalized in terms
of the motivating effects of competition or the by appeals to personal freedoms”
(2008, p. 146). Describing US K–12 enrollment patterns through the 1990s and
into the first decade of this century, he concludes that reforms such as vouchers,
charter schools, tuition tax credits, open enrollment, and home schooling have
been used increasingly by the White middle class “to fund a disguised form of
private (quasi-­private) education within the public school system” (p.  155).
Indeed, even as this chapter is being written, the Arizona Senate Finance Com-
mittee has passed a measure that would double the existing tax credit allowed
for private school tuition, applying it only to students who transfer from public
to private or parochial schools, and also completely remove the requirement for
any form of annual testing as an accountability measure that applies to all other
public and charter schools (Fischer, 2012). (A previous similar effort had been
vetoed the prior year by Arizona’s Republican governor, not because of philo-
sophical opposition but because the measure would have further depleted
already-­battered state coffers.) The recently proposed measure was opposed by
representatives of education groups, including the lobbyist for the Arizona
School Boards Association, who objected to removal of the testing measure that
applied to all other schools in the state. However, this perspective was dismissed
by the state senator who proposed the bill, who asserted, “If the parent is doing
research and choosing the school and then . . . chooses to keep that child there
because they think it is what is the best fit, I don’t know how you need much
more accountability than that” (p. A6). While the eventual success of this legis-
lation is as yet unknown, it is a stark example of the influence of political
Multiple Actors and Arenas   47

p­ olicymakers in state legislatures who can propose new modes of directing

public funds to private and semi-­private educational enterprises while ignoring
the constraints of existing research, democratic fairness, and fiscal responsibility.
Concurrently, however, there is a nascent realization that school choice alone
does not guarantee leaps in student achievement; some charter advocates have
begun to call for “not just choice, but good choice,” as a recent front-­page
newspaper report states (Kossan, 2012).
Enrollment in charters is less likely to reflect ethnic and cultural diversity of
surrounding populations (Frankenberg, Siegel-­Hawley, & Wang, 2011). Of
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varying sizes, charters may not always have the curricular range of public
schools, so access to instruction in various foreign languages may be restricted.
Besides charters, the current educational scene includes a substantial number of
home-­schooled youngsters, as well as some who complete some or even most
of their work online. In percentage terms, homeschooling in the United States
has been the fastest-­growing alternative to traditional public education, in part
because of its initial small base. Existing data suggest that it is mainly “a White,
middle-­class movement with religious overtones that is growing rapidly” (Glass,
2008, p. 171). In all these environments, enforcement of state standards is quite
variable, and opportunities for consistent and well-­articulated second language
study similarly so. Internationally, there is evidence that, notably but not only in
developing countries, the uneven quality of public instruction contributes to
growing demand for private tutoring, available only to students whose families
can pay for it (Hamid, Sussex, & Khan, 2009).

Online Learning as Preferred Mode of Instruction

Along with tremendous enthusiasm for charter schooling as the preferred mode
of school organization, we observe a similar, sometimes even greater, enthusi-
asm for online learning as the optimal, and sometimes the only, mode of
instruction. In fact, a substantial subset of charter schools exist only online (Saul,
2011). Technologically mediated instruction is often viewed by influential
policy actors such as business leaders and state legislators as a superior pedagogy,
essential to most jobs and thus an avenue of economic success for all students,
regardless of background (Ravitch, 2010; Ryman & Kossan, 2011). Evidence of
such putative benefits is decidedly mixed (Cuban, 2001). While there is little
research available in this very new area of endeavor, research findings to date
refute such assertions convincingly. In one recent national study of 116,000 stu-
dents schooled online, only about 27% met the US federal standard of “ad­equate
yearly progress,” as compared with about 52% of students at privately managed
conventional, or brick-­and-mortar, schools, a proportion comparable to that
found in US public schools (Anderson, 2012). Teachers may or may not find
that the emphasis on using technology for instruction is compatible with their
judgments of optimal instruction. Certainly, this varies by subject taught and
48   M. McGroarty

teacher and student background. Nonetheless, even teachers who regularly use
several technological tools in their daily activities outside of school do not
always favor curricula or activities based entirely on technologically mediated
activities. One recent example of related tensions comes from Idaho, where in
2011 the state legislature passed a law requiring all students to take at least one
online class to graduate from high school and, in addition, favored giving all
students and teachers laptops or tablet computers (Richtel, 2012). Both meas-
ures demanded additional funds, which the Idaho legislature proposed to gener-
ate in part by reducing salaries of teachers and administrators, thus putting
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expenditures for technology in direct competition with educator compensation.

Focusing for a moment only on the opportunities that online technologies
afford for second language learning, we find that in the world of research,
related questions are now being explored with far greater attention to the “eco-
logical” concerns surrounding use of computers and the diverse and varied
affordances they provide (Lafford, 2009). Crucially, technological tools of all
kinds offer the potential for greater student agency (Warschauer, 2005), and for
agency that can be, and is, exercised in many different settings, including a wide
array of activities outside classrooms, such as video games (Piirainen-Marsh &
Tainio, 2009) and listening to music (Grau, 2009). A great deal of research on
related phenomena concentrates on descriptive accounts of young people using
English-­medium technology; the dominance of English, as the research focus
may obscure the uses of other languages; and the hybridity and language mixing
also typical in informal interactions. Often, technologically mediated activities
are pursued together with like-­minded friends; there is evidence of some gender
differences in preferred modes of engagement, and also often a sense that young
people view technologically mediated activities as very different from the aca-
demic avenues for language development their teachers emphasize (Grau, 2009).
These varied, individually driven uses of technologies for informal learning
stand in sharp contrast to the existing picture of schools that deliver an entire
curriculum online, including standardized assessments of basic skills, and hence
emphasize uniformity in goals and tasks.
Competition for scarce educational dollars is far from the only reason that
teachers and other educators do not embrace technology-­intensive instruction.
Even scholars with career-­long research records in applications of technology to
human problems, such as the value of robots in providing some nursing care for
elderly people or in engaging individuals with dementia, have begun to pose
questions about the effect of constant, daily engagement with and through elec-
tronic devices (Turkle, 2011). If, both in education and in other areas of daily
life, we prize mediated interaction above all, what does this mean for our ability
to appreciate and enjoy each other’s company in person, whether with family
members, classmates in school, a team at work, or a group of friends? Learning
to adjust and balance communication through more traditional means with
technologically mediated means (actually talking, for example, rather than
Multiple Actors and Arenas   49

sending an email) will pose a continuing challenge for education and language
education and for social life writ large.

Standardized Tests as Proof of Student Learning and Teacher

Success
For decades, many American policymakers, legislators, and school board
members have been attracted to the idea of a universally applicable quality
metric such as may be found in business and technology, despite the fundamen-
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tal dissimilarities between manufacturing operations and schools (Cuban, 2007).

The assessment demands of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) were varied, and far
more stringent than ever observed before, requiring that all children and identi-
fiable subgroups, such as English language learners and children with special
needs, achieve “adequate yearly progress” each year (Eick & Valli, 2010;
McGuinn, 2006; Menken, 2008). The only areas tested are English and mathe-
matics; additionally, both are nearly always tested only in English. (Although
provisions for accommodations of these assessments, including translations, have
been developed, evidence to date suggests that they have not been systemati-
cally employed for even half of eligible students; see Rivera & Collum, 2006.)
Many critics have remarked that the enthusiasm for developing metrics to
measure students, schools, and teachers associated with No Child Left Behind
has greatly oversimplified learning and teaching, and has led to impoverished
curricula and narrower educational experiences, particularly in areas with high
minority populations or affected by poverty, two categories that often overlap
(Glass, 2008; Hazi & Rucinski, 2009; Ravitch, 2010; Tyack, 2003). Moreover,
such metrics can overemphasize technocratic aspects of education at the expense
of the moral and interpersonal development that parents and educators also
value.

Growth of Alternative and Additional Forms of Teacher

Certification
Both shortages of teachers graduating from traditional university-­based prepara-
tion programs and dissatisfaction with overall quality of teachers have produced
national and local organizations that seek to recruit new teachers without a
background or training in education. Often, such organizations focus on areas
of perceived urgent need, either curricular (usually STEM, defined as Science,
Technology and Mathematics; never, as far as I can determine, on foreign or
second language teachers, but sometimes bilingual teachers, an encouraging
though partial recognition of the importance of teacher language abilities) or
geographic factors (most often, inner-­city schools). The desirability of providing
teachers with more foundational knowledge and more effective early career
support and carefully tailored coaching has long been noted (Sarason, 1993).
50   M. McGroarty

While it is always better to have effective rather than ineffective teachers, there
is no evidence that new teachers recruited through non-­traditional means
provide students with more effective instruction or are, in fact, superior to tradi-
tionally educated teachers. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that effective-
ness varies over time (Ravitch, 2010).
One factor that keeps new teachers, whether in traditional or innovative
programs, in the classroom long enough to become more effective is the quality
of coaching and mentoring received. The pre-­assignment training and ongoing
mentoring of new teachers in many non-­traditional programs are variable; many
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receive little feedback or coaching, thus depriving them of job-­relevant social

capital or “relational wealth” (Pil & Leana, 2009), the ability to form relation-
ships with colleagues dealing with the same curricular issues and work on them
over time in order to develop context-­specific expertise. This web of supportive
relationships of trust within schools and between schools and the public is one
of the intangible resources critical for school success (Bryk & Schneider, 2002),
and one that is almost completely neglected in current accountability regimes.
Such collegial wealth can improve teacher competence and also mitigate the
effect of externally imposed curricular content perceived as harmful (Pease-­
Alvarez et al., 2010). Coincident with the rise of alternative forms of teacher
certification is the increase in more explicitly articulated standards for entering
teachers and growing acceptance of National Board certification for teachers
interested in documenting mastery in subject area pedagogies. Like other stand-
ards, these measures have drawn attention to fundamentally important skills (for
example, the need for language teachers to have good control of the language
taught, which, in the United States, cannot be assumed), although they have
also been criticized as overemphasizing a “technical-­rational,” context-­free view
of teaching (Donato, 2009).

Influence of Non-­profit Foundations

Decreased respect for educators as professionals, promotion of business-­oriented
models of learning and assessment, and a fiscal environment in which some
private-­sector entities, notably large corporations, can expend resources outside
the constraints of the budgetary practices that schools must follow all contribute
both to a level of discourse and to patterns of activity that, intentionally or not,
render wealthy individuals or businesses, often through their non-­profit founda-
tions, unusually powerful in American educational decision making. Like the
revenue and tax policies that support growth of charter schools, laws and regu-
lations related to foundations are some of the “background structural features”
(Putnam & Feldstein, 2003, p. 271) that have in the past decade assumed prom-
inence in American education. As Ravitch observes, in discussing the educa-
tional activities of the Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations (representing
multi-­billion-dollar success in technology, real estate, and retail business), “Each
Multiple Actors and Arenas   51

of the venture philanthropies began with a different emphasis, but, over time
they converged in support of reform strategies that mirrored their own experi-
ence in acquiring huge fortunes such as competition, choice, deregulation,
incentives, and other market-­based approaches,” all of which vary considerably
from the collaborative modes more typical of education (2010, p. 200). None of
these strategies is necessarily effective or ineffective; their use as tools for educa-
tional improvement demands a great deal of carefully designed research, con-
ducted systematically in varied settings and cumulated over time (Mosteller &
Boruch, 2002). Many currently influential policymakers are impatient with this
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paradigm. For example, it is instructive to see what occurred when one of the
reforms favored by the Gates Foundation, splitting up large high schools into
smaller high schools, did not turn out to produce increased achievement: At
that point, the foundation discontinued funding for related evaluations but
greatly increased contributions to professional educational organizations and
advocacy groups, especially those associated with school reforms such as char-
ters. Contributions to such groups increased from just over a quarter-­million
dollars in 2002 to $57 million in 2005. Among the groups receiving the funds
were the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Education Trust, the
National Association of State Boards of Education, the National Alliance for
Public Charter Schools, the National Association of Secondary School Princi-
pals, the National Governors Association, and the National Conference of State
Legislatures (Ravitch, 2010, p. 210). It is little wonder that many policy docu-
ments from these organizations would present the reforms promoted by the
foundation in a favorable light. Clearly, these private foundations have the
resources to get their preferred “stories” out into the press and public discourse,
even when extant research results do not confirm the narrative.
Through their own non-­profit foundations, publishers of educational mater-
ials and tests, too, are clearly wooing educators charged with recommending
textbook series or assessment programs. One recent news item shows how a
major educational publisher, one that is also heavily involved in materials for
second language learners of English, provided multiple international trips for
American educators to, for example, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom,
Finland, China, and Brazil through its foundation. The travel funds were dis-
bursed through grants to professional organizations, namely the Council of
Chief State School Officers and the American Association of School Adminis-
trators (Winerip, 2012). In this connection, it is instructive to note that similar
efforts from industries, principally but not only pharmaceutical companies, to
influence the professional judgment of physicians, those in training and those
already in practice, have recently drawn close scrutiny in the medical commun-
ity; professional and public concerns have led to clearer guidelines and more
extensive lists of prohibited practices on the part of related industries (Associ-
ation of American Medical Colleges, 2008). The key insights and related guide-
lines from these reforms of medical education and practice – that supposedly
52   M. McGroarty

“free” meals, travel, prescription pads, etc. influence professionals unduly, and
often unconsciously – have apparently not yet percolated into general educa-
tional endeavors.

Developments in Theories of Justice and Citizenship: Useful in

Education?
Whether in the United States or elsewhere, schools are often characterized by
substantial organizational inertia that constricts learning opportunities for both
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learners and teachers (Sarason, 1982, 1993). Hence, public and political impa-
tience with perceived and actual shortcomings of traditional institutions and
curricula cannot and should not be dismissed; they have roots in deeply held
hopes for individual futures. But, as the areas reviewed in this chapter demon-
strate, the reforms in governance, curricular content and assessment, and teacher
selection and support that have arisen as ostensible solutions deserve careful and
continued scrutiny. Evidence matters, but it does not consist only, or perhaps
even mainly, of annual gains in test scores or value-­added metrics that now
drive so much national policy (Haskins & Baron, 2011). There are many forms
of evidence that can help parents, learners, teachers, policymakers, and the
public understand and promote effective education.
Given the growing fragmentation of educational service delivery and mul-
tiple actors and arenas now relevant for education, how can educators, research-
ers, and leaders go about the work of implementing and sustaining integrated,
thoughtful, and coherent instruction for learners? How can learners and teachers
direct their own energies to that end? Some direction comes from recent devel-
opments in theories and modes of civic action. Even into the 1980s and 1990s,
in the view of long-­time activist Harry Boyte, the role of a full citizen was con-
ceptualized largely as encompassed by voting – that is, reacting to alternatives
generated and framed by the professional political class (Boyte, 2004, 2008).
Exercising the franchise is indeed one way to make one’s presence known in
democratic political systems. However, increasingly, theorists and activists have
realized that voting is but one facet of democratic civic activity: citizens, includ-
ing young citizens-­in-development, or students, can and must find ways to gen-
erate questions, develop and consider alternatives, and take actions to remedy
problems that may or may not be amenable to any kind of vote. It is not just
the right to vote but also the power to consider and frame alternatives for indi-
vidual and collective action that denotes genuine citizenship, understood as a set
of moral obligations rather than particular legal categories ( Jayal, 2009).
Liberal views of citizenship emphasize the citizen as voter and consumer; com-
munitarian models favor citizens as volunteers; and the emerging public achieve-
ment model casts citizens as creators of public wealth (Boyte, 2004, p. 93). Boyte
finds that, over the last generation, “the civic mission of schools – educating for
community concern as well as individual success – has been weakened” (2008,
Multiple Actors and Arenas   53

p.  126). While mechanisms like vouchers may enable low-­income or minority
children to increase the odds of their individual success (and, as we have seen, that
is by no means automatic), such approaches “neglect the work of reconnecting
schools with civic life” (p. 132); indeed, educational reform efforts for the past
century have focused too narrowly on schools, ignoring what happens in homes,
peer groups, and neighborhoods. (In fact, proactive support of all kinds for learn-
ers and families at home and in their neighborhoods is a hallmark of some con-
temporary programs like Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City; see Tough,
2008.)
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Building educational success requires attending to the full range of circum-

stances facing learners, helping schools and teachers become “far more con-
nected to and respectful of relational values, and ethnic and immigrant cultures
across classes and incomes” (Boyte, 2008, p. 131). Note again the importance of
relational wealth, the fund of interpersonal knowledge and trust mentioned pre-
viously as a vital resource for educators and schools. This resource, exceedingly
important and, fortunately, renewable, does not belong to professionals,
although they help to build it. It is generated through interaction, and thus
demands continuous communication within and across social groups. One
example within a traditional educational institution comes from the Experience
Corps, a program that brought retired adults into an elementary school three
times a week for individual tutoring sessions in reading and math with children
at risk of falling behind. While the program had an educational focus, education
was not its sole aim; it was explicitly meant to build social capital for both the
children and their tutors, to establish “relationships that have a social, emotional,
and educational impact” (Putnam & Feldstein, 2003, p.  196). In a more
complex instance, Boyce describes the purposeful cultivation of relational
wealth in a Neighborhood Learning Community in a historically diverse and
low-­income area of St. Paul, Minnesota, namely the West Side, where a set of
local initiatives eventually linked 17 organizations, including a public library, a
social service center, a youth apprentice program, a high school, a children’s
summer camp, and an educator institute, all united by participation in activities
demonstrating that “everyone is a teacher, a learner, and a member of the com-
munity” (p. 140). The new technologies often presented as revolutionary are, in
both these programs, integrated into traditional and varied communication pat-
terns that support related activities.
All these developments raise questions about the ability of the American edu-
cational system and, to some degree, other such systems to develop the language
capabilities demanded for true democratic participation and deliberation,
empathic global consciousness, and the engagement and enjoyment of human
imaginative capacity (Ackerman & Fishkin, 2004; Nussbaum, 2006, 2011a,
2011b). Language policies and related practices have a role in shaping the voice
of citizens, raising awareness of alternative forms of expression and ways of life
and belief. The monolingual, mechanistic model of instruction and assessment
54   M. McGroarty

diminishes opportunities for learners, teachers, and the public to create social
capital, shrinking the potential for present engagement and future growth.
There may be lessons for the United States and other long-­established democra-
cies in the enthusiasm and support for education and for language learning
(often, perhaps too often, in English, but including other languages too) that
have propelled many countries to the front ranks of international interaction
(Zakaria, 2011). Whether or not new technologies revolutionize education or
simply enhance it selectively, they have clearly opened channels of political
expression around the globe. Educators, researchers, and the public stand to
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benefit from a better understanding of the multiplicity of factors surrounding

contemporary language education and the challenges and opportunities each
affords in particular circumstances. Such knowledge may in turn begin to shape
public discourse, social action, and decision making in less divisive, more pro-
ductive ways (McDonnell, 2009). In any democracy, present and future citizens
need and deserve no less.

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PART II

Competing Agendas
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The chapters in Part II examine the following critical issues: How do state
authorities use educational language policies to manage access to language rights
and language education, and what are the consequences of programs and pol-
icies for minority communities? How do state authorities use language policies
for the purposes of political and cultural governance? How has the spread of the
discourse of human rights affected language policymaking?
Language policies in education often manage individuals’ access to two
important rights: the right to access an education that permits social, political,
and economic participation; and the right to an education in one’s mother
tongue(s). In order to understand how these rights are implemented or con-
strained, historical analysis explores these rights in practice, as they are derived
from competing agendas of different ethnic, national, and linguistic groups. In
Chapter 4, Terrence G. Wiley examines the distribution of rights to linguistic
minorities in the United States. He is especially interested in the highly con-
tested issue of bilingual education, in particular the impact of the resurgence of
the states’ rights movement. Focusing on the state of Arizona, which has been a
leader in adopting regressive policies that restrict the use of languages other than
English, Wiley explores the important connections between language policies
and other areas of social policy, such as immigration and delivery of public
services.
In Chapter 5, Jane Freeland analyzes the attempt in the Caribbean Coast
region of Nicaragua to adopt language policies based on an explicit conception
of language rights. Her analysis reveals a fundamental tension between policies
based on European and American notions of “language” and “identity” on the
one hand, and local language ideologies, multilingual language practices, and
complex social identities on the other. She raises the important question of
whether current discourses of human rights may be inadequate in complex mul-
tilingual sociolinguistic ecologies. In Chapter 6, David Cassels Johnson explores
what Foucault termed “governmentality” in order to understand dramatic
changes in policy and policymaking processes during the attempt by the School
District of Philadelphia to implement the No Child Left Behind federal educa-
tion law. Johnson’s analysis is particularly important in its integration of macro-­
level texts with micro-­level discursive practices.
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4
A BRIEF HISTORY AND
ASSESSMENT OF LANGUAGE
RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES
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Terrence G. Wiley

This chapter provides an overview of the historical and contemporary contexts

for educational language rights in the United States. It focuses on two funda-
mental rights: (1) the right to access an education that allows for social, economic,
and political participation, which typically requires education in the dominant
language; and (2) the right to an education mediated in one’s mother tongue(s). The
chapter contends that for language minority students, both rights are necessary if
they are to participate in the broader society and maintain continuity with their
ethnolinguistic communities and home cultures. An important assumption of
this analysis is that educational language policies are best understood in their
relationship to broader societal policies, dominant beliefs, and power relation-
ships between groups. The chapter documents the negative impact of restrictive
policies of the past, the struggle for language minority rights, and the recent
resurgence of restrictive English-­only policies and practices and their impact on
language minority groups. It identifies and explains the importance of key
federal court cases involving rights for educational equity, access, and accom-
modation as it assesses the salience of language rights in US law. The discussion
notes that implicit or covert or informal practices can have the same force as
official policies, or even greater force; thus, their impact must be considered
along with formal policies. It also chronicles the rise and fall of federally sup-
ported bilingual education, and analyzes the role of some states in recently pro-
moting regressive policies that restrict language minority rights in education.
The chapter further notes that the struggle for educational rights has experi-
enced major setbacks over the past two decades. It concludes by assessing the
current status of language minority rights in the face of the resurgence of states’
rights.
62   T. G. Wiley

Rights to Education and Rights to Language in Education

Many children in the United States, like many of those around the world, enter
schools where there is some difference between the language, or variety of lan-
guage, spoken in their homes and the language of instruction in the school.
Given the prevalence of language diversity in the United States and around the
world, language differences need to be a major consideration if access and equal
opportunities to learn are to be ensured. According to Article 26 of the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, education is a basic human right
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(Spring, 2000). In 1991, the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Persons

Belonging to National or Ethnic Minorities, Article 4, stated that “States should
take appropriate measures so that, whenever possible, persons belonging to
National or Ethnic minorities may have adequate opportunities to learn their
mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue” (cited in Spring,
2000, p. 31).
In any discussion of educational language rights, it is useful to consider
assumptions about language rights more broadly. According to Macías (1979),
there are two fundamental types of rights: The first is “the right to freedom from
discrimination on the basis of language” (p. 41). This in essence is a right to pro-
tection. The second is “the right to use one’s language in the activities of com-
munal life” (p. 41). This is essentially the right to expression. Macías concludes
that “[t]here is no right to choice of language . . . except as it flows from these
two rights above in combination with other rights, such as due process, equal
enforcement of the laws, and so on” (pp. 41–42). Rights in the United States
and other Western countries tend to be seen as being located in the “individual”
rather than in the “group” (Macías, 1979; Wiley, 1996a). In international law,
“all of the existing rights . . . are individual rights and freedoms, although their
manifestations may involve more than one individual” (de Varennes, 1999,
p. 118).
Historically, in the United States, rights and privileges have been distributed
selectively on the basis of the recognition of legal statuses, specifically protected
classes such as race and national origin. In order for language rights to be
asserted, the “identifiable and legal standing of a class based on language” must
be recognized (Macías, 1979, p.  42). Language rights have been recognized
mainly through their association with other constitutional protections that
identify race, religion, and national origin. Thus, language rights are derivative
from other protected classes.
For many in the United States, the idea that a child who speaks a minority
language or vernacular dialect should have a right to instruction in his or her lan-
guage is a peculiar idea – one that is weighed against the widely held belief that
the need for a common language is greater than any claims of language rights by
minorities. The idea of language rights, however, is not new. In 1953, a
UNESCO resolution held that every child should have a right to attain literacy
Language Rights in the United States   63

in his or her mother tongue. More recently, Spring (2000) has put forward a
detailed argument and proposal for universal rights to education, which would
include cultural and language rights in education. This proposal reflects particular
sensitivity to the educational rights of indigenous peoples as they increasingly face
the intrusive consequences of economic globalization, which has disrupted local
social and economic ecologies.
Spring makes a compelling case that all people have a right to an education
in their own language and in the methods of teaching and learning appropriate
to their own culture, and a right to an education that teaches:
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1. an understanding of their own culture and their relation to it;

2. their mother tongue;
3. the dominant or official language of the country;
4. an understanding of the effect of the world culture and economy on their
own culture and economy (2000, p. 159).

The first two rights are based on the premise that children need to identify posi-
tively with their cultures and mother tongues(s) in order to learn effectively.
The third right, to learn the dominant language, is based on the need to
promote access and participation in the larger society. Spring proposed the
fourth right of understanding the effects of world culture in recognition of the
challenge faced by indigenous peoples when the global economy threatens the
ecology of traditional ways of living. In the United States, federal bilingual edu-
cation programs implemented in the late 1960s until the demise of Title VII in
2001 attempted to address the third right. Gaining support for children’s lin-
guistic human rights as represented by the second right and translating it into
school policy is a major challenge, especially when the student’s native language
or speech variety has little status recognition. In particular, schools, policymak-
ers, and pundits have generally not accepted as legitimate languages or varieties
(including “non-­standard” ones such as Ebonics, Appalachian English, and
Hawai‘i Creole English), despite the linguistic evidence that deems them to be
legitimate (Ramírez, Wiley, DeKlerk, and Lee, 2005; Rickford, 1999; Wolfram,
Adger, & Christian, 1999).

The Historical Context of Language Diversity in the United

States
Prior to European conquest and colonization, North America had a rich array
of indigenous languages. In that region of the continent that was eventually to
become the United States, the linguistic dominance, or what Heath (1976)
referred to as the “language status achievement,” of English occurred during the
colonial period. Missionaries were early promoters of English and other colonial
languages; nevertheless, they also promoted indigenous literacy to advance their
64   T. G. Wiley

attempts at conversion (Gray, 1999; Gray & Fiering, 2000). After the founding
of the United States, a large portion of immigrants were predominantly from
English-­speaking England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as other areas of
Western Europe where languages other than English were spoken. As a result,
until well into the early 20th century, native language instruction and bilingual
education were not uncommon in areas where language minority groups com-
prised a major portion of the local population (Kloss, 1998; Toth, 1990).
Much of the discussion about language diversity and schooling in the United
States has centered on immigrant language minorities. Immigration has provided
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an important source of language diversity, as well as a major source of English.

Other sources also have been important. Historically, language minorities in the
United States fall into three major categories: (1) immigrants (including refugees);
(2) enslaved peoples who were brought to North America against their will; and
(3) indigenous peoples. Macías (1999) extends the notion of indigenous peoples to
include (a) those who inhabited an area that later became part of the United
States prior to its national expansion into the region they occupied, which would
include some Spanish, French, and even Russian speakers, and (b) groups that
have an historical or cultural bond to the Americas before European colonization,
which includes Native Americans and Alaskan and Hawaiian Natives. For
example, it is estimated that 23,000 Spanish-­speaking people inhabited areas in
1790 that would later became part of the southwestern United States (Leibow-
itz, 1971). For many, language shift to English resulted not from choice but as a
consequence of involuntary immigration through enslavement or annexation
and conquest. Table 4.1 summarizes the major policies and events that have
affected the educational treatment and language rights of language minorities.

Educational Language Policies and the Broader Societal Context

A number of scholars contend that educational language policies are best under-
stood in their relationship to broader societal policies, dominant beliefs, and power
relationships between groups. Leibowitz (1969, 1971, 1974, 1982), for example,
concluded that language policies have been used as instruments of social control (see
Tollefson 1991, 1995, 2006, for a related discussion of language planning as an
instrument of discourse, state, and ideological power). Leibowitz’s thesis was developed
by analyzing the impact of official English policies and restrictive language policies
across political, economic, and educational domains. He argued:

The significant point to be noted is that language designation in all three

areas followed a marked, similar pattern so that it is reasonably clear that
one was responding not to the problems specifically related to that area
(i.e. educational issues or job requirements in the economic sphere) but to
broader problems in the society to which language was but one response.
(1974, p. 6)
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Table 4.1  Historical Overview of Policies and Events Affecting the Educational Treatment and Language Rights of Language Minorities

Time Period Policy Orientations and Key Events Implications for Educational Language Rights

1740–1845 Compulsory ignorance laws were imposed Enslaved African Americans were barred from becoming literate until 1865. In some
under colonial rule and retained in the slave states, Whites could also be fined or punished for teaching African Americans to read.
codes of Southern states. Peoples in the Northwest Territories and, subsequently, those in the Mississippi and
Treaty of Paris in 1783; Louisiana Purchase Missouri river valleys were incorporated under US territorial and, later, state laws.
in 1803; Florida and adjacent areas annexed Mission schools were established among some Indian peoples with less than
in 1820. spectacular results in promoting English and Anglo values.
In 1819 the Civilization Fund Act was Cherokee schools succeed in promoting Cherokee literacy and biliteracy in English.
enacted to promote English education and By 1852, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles were also operating their own schools.
practical skills among Indian peoples. German-language instruction flourished through private and sectarian efforts in the
A Cherokee writing system was developed Midwest. In 1837, Pennsylvania passed a law allowing for public schooling in
(in 1822) by Sequoia. German. In 1840, Ohio passed a law allowing for German–English public schooling.
German bilingual schools thrive, even amid
the Know Nothing Movement
(1840–1850s).
1845–1905 Texas annexed in 1845, followed by Peoples residing in Mexican territory were conquered and brought under US
Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, 1846; territorial or state authority; Indigenous/resident populations were incorporated and
Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo and Mexican were subject to US territorial and, later, state laws.
Cession (1848); Gadsden Purchase (1853); American Indians lost autonomy and governance of their schools. Among the
Alaska purchased (1867); Hawai‘i (1898) and Cherokee, a gradual decline in literacy resulted as the policy of compulsory
Puerto Rico (1898) became US territories. Americanization and English-only instruction persisted into the 1930s.
The “treaty period” ended (1871). The first School-related English-only laws aimed at German Catholics were passed (1889), and
“off-reservation” English-only boarding subsequently repealed, Illinois and Wisconsin.
school was established (1889). The Supreme Court upholds the doctrine of “separate but equal” racial segregation.
German immigration peaked in the 1880s.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
continued
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Time Period Policy Orientations and Key Events Implications for Educational Language Rights

1905–1923 Eastern and Southern European immigration German instruction was gradually declining in the schools (public and private), but
increases (to WWI). Immigration is restricted was nevertheless still prevalent until WWI. During WWI, German instruction was
on the basis of national origin. banned or dropped in most states. A majority of states passed laws officially
designating English as the language of instruction and restricting the use of “foreign”
languages.
1923–1950 Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) In 1923, the Supreme Court overturned a 1919 Nebraska law banning instruction in
Farrington v. Tokushige (1927) German. Several similar cases were decided during the 1920s, including one in
Tribal Restoration (1930s) Hawai‘i dealing with private schooling in Japanese.
Guam is added as a Territory (1945); the Deculturation policies aimed at American Indians were relaxed from the 1930s to the
Philippines was granted independence. 1950s.
Pacific Island peoples were incorporated.
1950–1960 Native American Termination Policies. Renewed restrictions on Native Americans.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Termination of legal segregation (reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson).
1960–1980 1964 Civil Rights Act Civil rights and immigration reform provided legal protections from discrimination.
1965 Immigration Act The US government broke new ground in allowing for expediency-oriented
1968 Bilingual Education Act educational language policies. Restrictive policies toward Native Americans were
Tribal restoration (Phase II). again relaxed.
Lau v. Nichols (1974) The Supreme Court affirmed that school districts must accommodate language
Serna v. Portales (1974) minority children. Additional federal cases prescribe bilingual education in local
Rios v. Reed (1978) contexts.
U.S. v. Texas (1981) A federal court ruled that the Ann Arbor School District must accommodate speakers
M.L. King Jr. Elementary v. Ann Arbor School of African-American English
District (1979) Criteria for acceptable program remedies were established.
Casteñeda v. Pickard (1981)
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1980–1998 English Only Movement, 1981 to present There was a return to designations of English as the official language coupled with
Proposition 63 (1986) restrictionism during a period of increased anti-immigrant sentiment.
The Reagan administration (1980–1988) The federal government de-emphasized bilingual education as a remedy.
backs away from enforcement of Lau The federal government recognized the rights of Native Americans to use and
Remedies maintain their languages.
Native American Languages Preservation Act A series of initiatives were proposed/passed in California and other states to restrict
(1990 and 1992) immigrant rights in education and to restrict bilingual education.
California Propositions 63 (1986); 187
(1994); 209 (1996); and 227 (1998)
1992–2009 Flores v. Arizona The various iterations of Flores have largely focused on the adequacy of funding to
2009-present Horne v. Flores ensure ELLs equal opportunity and the extent to which states or the federal
government have the authority to determine what is adequate.

Sources: Crawford (1992, 1995); Hernández-Chávez (1994); Kloss (1998); Leibowitz (1969, 1971, 1974); Lillie et al. (2010); Lyons (1990/1995); Macías (1999); Spicer (1962,
1980); Wiley (1998a, 1998b, 1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2007a, 2007b, 2010a, 2010b, 2012); Wiley, Lee, & Rumberger (2009); Wiley & Lukes (1996); Wiley & Wright (2004).
68   T. G. Wiley

Leibowitz concluded that

as English became officially designated for specific purposes, for example,

as the language of instruction, or for voting, it was almost always coupled
with restrictions on the use of other languages in addition to discrimina-
tory legislation and practices in other fields against the minorities who
spoke the language, including private indignities . . . which made it clear
that the issue was a broader one.
(1974, p. 6)
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Leibowitz (1971) also compared the restrictive impact of English-­only policies

imposed on German, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants as well as on Native
Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Rican Americans. He concluded
that the motivations to impose official English and to restrict native languages in
schools corresponded to the general level of hostility of the dominant group
toward various language minority groups.
Leibowitz’s insights were based on historical analysis and reflection and an
analysis of the legal sources of struggle during the modern civil rights era that
spanned the 1950s through the 1970s. Victories in attempting to ensure educa-
tional, political, and economic access were, however, short-­lived. In 1994 in
California, Proposition 187 was designed to restrict health and educational rights
of immigrants and their children, who lacked the status of legal residents. The
proposition was approved by a majority of those who voted – that is, of people
who were eligible to vote; those targeted by Prop. 187 were unable to vote
because of their “illegal” status. In public debates over Prop. 187, the major
arguments were between those who contended that rights to health and educa-
tion should be restricted to citizens and legal residents, and opponents of the
proposition, who maintained that these entitlements were human rights and that
children should not surrender them merely because of the legal status of their
parents. Subsequently, most provisions of Prop. 187 were struck down in court,
yet the controversy over immigrant rights and entitlements echoed around the
country. Soon, the principle of affirmative action was also challenged in Cali-
fornia and other states. The important lesson to be learned from these events is
that attacks on educational language access and equal opportunities to learn are
not isolated from larger struggles for access to economic and political participa-
tion. In these struggles, again as Macías (1979) noted, the rights both of freedom
from discrimination and of self-­expression are at stake.
In 1998, a formal assault began on the right of language minority children to
be educated bilingually and the right of their parents to make that choice for
them. Voters approved policies restricting bilingual education and replacing it
with English-­only instruction in California (Proposition 227). California was
soon followed by Arizona (Proposition 203) and Massachusetts (Question 2). A
similar measure in Colorado was not approved.
Language Rights in the United States   69

A synopsis of the historical effects of educational policies and language policies

on linguistic minorities is represented in Table 4.2, which notes both the initial
mode of incorporation and the subsequent policy toward and management of
each group. Although English was universally imposed, the experience of each
group differed. Some groups were more restricted and segregated than others.
Historically, only African Americans experienced the full gamut of inhumanities,
including “compulsory ignorance” laws prior to 1865 (Weinberg, 1995).
The belief that all children deserve the right to educational opportunity
through publicly supported education – let alone an equal opportunity to learn
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– only gradually came to gain broad support. It was certainly not a widely held
notion at the founding of the nation. During the 19th century, the idea that
children should have a right to publicly supported education gained favor. Even
as it did, however, the right to equal educational opportunity was selectively
withheld from many children of color, many of whom also belonged to lan-
guage minorities (Spring, 1994; Weinberg, 1995, 1997). Adding the force of
law, the Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, affirmed the dogma of segregated,
separate but equal education, which was enforced from 1896 to 1954. It was not
until the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision that the court
reasoned, “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed
in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education” (cited in Leibowitz,
1982, p.  162). In the Brown decision, race had been the singular focus.
Skutnabb-­Kangas (1995) has made a similar case for linguistic access:

If you want to have your fair share of the power and the resources (both
material and non-­material) of your native country, you have to be able to
take part in the democratic processes in your country. You have to be
able to negotiate, try to influence, to have a voice. The main instrument
for doing that is language. . . . In a democratic country, it should be the
duty of the school system to give every child, regardless of linguistic back-
ground the same chance to participate in the democratic process. If this
requires that (at least) some of children (i.e., the linguistic minority chil-
dren) become bilingual or multilingual, then it should be the duty of the
educational system to make them bilingual/multilingual.
(p. 42)

Language Policy Orientations and Their Implications for

Minority Educational Rights
In assessing various policies toward language diversity and their implications for
educational language rights, it is helpful to locate them in a language policy
framework. Table 4.3 provides a taxonomy of policy orientations or stances of
the federal government, states, and other agencies with the power to impose
policies or practices that have the force of policy.
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Table 4.2 Historical Comparison of Selected US Linguistic Minority Groups’ Initial Modes of Incorporation and Subsequent Educational
Treatments
Ethnolinguistic Group Initial Mode of English Compelled Compulsory Legally Segregated Excluded from Quotas in Higher
Incorporation Ignorance Laws Schools Education

African-Americans Enslaved Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

American Indians Conquered Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Mexican-Americans Conquered Yes No Yes No Yes
Puerto Rican Conquered Yes No No No No
Pacific peoples
Filipinos Conquered Yes No No No No
Micronesians Conquered Yes No No No No
Polynesians Conquered Yes No No No No
Asian-Americans
Japanese Immigrant Yes No Yes No No
Korean Immigrant Yes No Yes No No
Chinese Immigrant Yes No Yes Yes No
Hong Kong Chinese Immigrant Yes No No No No
Taiwanese Chinese Immigrant Yes No No No No
Asian Indians Immigrant Yes No No No No
Cambodians Refugee Yes No No No No
Laotians and Hmong Refugee Yes No No No No
Vietnamese Refugee Yes No No No No

Source: Adapted from Weinberg (1997, p. 314).

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Table 4.3  Policy Orientations with Implications for Educational Language Rights

Governmental/State/Agency Policy Policy Characteristics Examples with Implications for Language Minority
Orientation toward Language Rights Educational Rights

Promotion-oriented policies The government, state, or agency allocates The Native American Languages Act (1990);
resources to support the promotion of specific Hawaiian as a co-official state language.
languages.
Expediency-oriented policies A pragmatic use of minority languages, typically Transitional bilingual education (TBE) programs to
involving accommodations to overcome perceived accommodate English “deficiencies” of speakers of
communication barriers between government languages other than English; bilingual ballots and
agencies and clients. tax forms.
Tolerance-oriented policies Characterized by the noticeable absence of state Language schools; private/religious schools in
intervention in the linguistic life of the language which heritage/community languages are
minority community. maintained by private resources.
Restrictive-oriented policies Legal prohibitions or curtailments on the use of For example, federal restriction on Indian languages
minority languages; age requirements dictating in boarding schools; WWI-era restrictions on
when a child may study a minority language or foreign language instruction; Prop. 227 and similar
foreign language. measures.
Null policies The significant absence of policy recognizing Failure to consider the implications of language
minority languages or language varieties. differences in instruction mediated only in English.
Repression-oriented policies Active efforts to eradicate minority languages. Outside the United States, include defining the use
of, or instruction in, a minority language as a
political crime (see Skuttnab-Kangas & Bucak,
1994).

Note
This table draws from and expands Kloss’s schema (1998; see also Macías & Wiley, 1998). The “null” and “repression-oriented” categories did not appear in Kloss’s
taxonomy. Kloss also limited these categories to formal governmental/state policies. Nevertheless, this schema can also be applied to institutional agencies and institu-
tional contexts as well as to implicit or covert policies or language management practices.
72   T. G. Wiley

It is important to recognize that language diversity has often been managed

(Spolsky, 2009) by implicit or covert policies and by informal practices that can
have the same force as official policies, or even greater force (Schiffman, 1996;
Shohamy, 2006; Wiley, 1999a, 2004); thus, it is useful to apply Table 4.3 to
both formal and informal policies and practices. Implicit policies include those that
may not even consciously start out to be language policies but have the effect of
policy. Covert policies, as the word implies, are more ominous. They are policies
that seek to use language or literacy requirements as a means of barring someone
from social, political, educational, or economic participation (Wiley, 1996b,
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2004). Historical examples include literacy requirements for voting and English
literacy requirements for entry to the United States for immigrants, which have
been used as gatekeeping mechanisms to exclude people on the basis of their
race or ethnicity (Leibowitz, 1969).
Promotion-­oriented policies receive governmental support. By the 1920s,
English had been designated as the official language of schooling in a majority
of states. As a result, language promotion resources have flowed primarily into
English instruction. At the institutional level, many colleges and universities
have long had foreign or second language requirements, but college-­level entry
requirements for demonstrated proficiency in English have provided the impetus
for most language-­related curricular policies since the late 19th century (Wright,
1980).
Expediency-­oriented policies are accommodations to help either those who do
not adequately understand English, or the dominant language, or the govern-
ment itself when it sees a reason to try to improve communication with speak-
ers of minority languages. Expediency policies are used to bridge contact
between a minority population and the government to facilitate communication
or assimilation (Kloss, 1998; Wiley, 1999a). Federally supported transitional
bilingual education fell under the category of expediency-­oriented policies.
With several localized exceptions, a tolerance-­oriented policy generally pre-
vailed toward speakers of European languages other than English up to the
World War I era. During the colonial period and early history of the republic,
education among European-­origin peoples was supported through private and
sectarian means. In the 19th century, English was the dominant language of
instruction, regardless of whether it had official designation or not. Native lan-
guage literacy and biliteracy in English and some Native American languages,
such as Cherokee, were promoted locally (Lepore, 2002; Weinberg, 1995).
Some states (Ohio and Pennsylvania) with large German-­origin populations for
a time even allowed public-­supported education in German, and German
together with English, but for the most part it was incumbent on local and
private stakeholders to foster education in community languages (Kloss, 1998;
Toth, 1990).
African-­origin peoples had a markedly different experience. Restrictive literacy
policies appeared in slave codes in the 1740s. Slaveholders saw literacy as a
Language Rights in the United States   73

direct threat to their ability to control the enslaved. Compulsory illiteracy laws
remained on the books until 1865 (Weinberg, 1995). Restrictive policies can be
quite varied, as Kontra, Phillipson, Skutnabb-­Kangas, and Várady (1999) point
out:

The state/government can restrict minority languages in three ways. It can

(1) . . . restrict the age-­groups and the range of school subjects for which
minority-­medium education is provided; . . . (2) the number of languages
through which education is made available; . . . [and/or] (3) reduce the
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number of people entitled to minority medium education by obfuscation

of who the rightholders/beneficiaries are.
(p. 10)

During World War I, for example, speakers of German, who were the second
most populous linguistic group at that time, suddenly found themselves stigma-
tized and forced to use English (Wiley, 1998a). During the 1920s and 1930s,
Chinese and Japanese community-­based schools operated, often meeting resist-
ance from territorial authorities in Hawai‘i and state authorities in California.
As previously noted, Leibowitz (1969, 1971, 1974) warned that restrictive
language policies were generally associated with other forms of discriminatory
practices. Thus, a major concern related to language minority rights stems from
the association between language and ethnic or racial minority status. School-­
based language requirements and standards, for example, can covertly be used as
surrogates for more overtly racist policies. In 1924 in Hawai‘i, for example,
English Standard Schools were implemented. Placement was based on tests of
Standard English that were used to sort children into “standard,” “nonstand-
ard,” and “feebleminded” educational tracks. For much of the 20th century,
tracking based on language proficiency in “standard” English correlated with
the racial status of children, resulting in racial segregation without an explicit,
racially based system.
Haas (1992) analyzed this historical pattern in school and university policies
and practices in Hawai‘i. He concluded that language management policies and
practices were forms of institutional racism (a form of implicit policy), wherein
discrimination results from institutional policies, regulations, standards, and
practices regardless of whether there is an overt intention to discriminate by
those responsible for carrying them out. Among the examples Haas identified
were: (1) educational programs failing to offer instruction in commonly spoken
languages even when the language minority communities requested them; (2)
mis-­assigning students to educational tracks based on their performance on tests
of Standard English, which were normed on national, rather than local, popula-
tions (for example, although about half the population of Hawai‘i is composed
of native speakers of Hawai‘i Creole English, HCE/“pidgin,” standardized tests
such as the SAT have been used to fulfill entry requirements for admission to
74   T. G. Wiley

the state-­supported university system); (3) insufficient use of immigrant lan-

guages by schools to communicate with parents; (4) inadequately trained staff
responsible for the education of language minority students; and (5) under-­
identifying and under-­serving language minority students owing to the failure
to recognize them as language minorities. In a separate analysis of the Hawaiian
educational situation, Romaine (1994) concluded:

Speakers of HCE have been discriminated against through education in a

school system which originally was set up to keep out those who could
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not pass an English test. In this way it was hoped to restrict the admission
of non-­white children into the English Standard schools set up in 1924,
which were attended mainly by Caucasian children. By institutionalizing
what was essentially racial discrimination along linguistic lines, the schools
managed to keep creole speakers in their place, maintaining distance
between them and English speakers until after World War II.
(p. 531; see also Agbayani & Takeuchi, 1986;
Benham & Heck, 1998; Kawamoto, 1993)

In Table 4.3, the null policy category indicates the significant absence of policy.
When educational policies have prescribed a one-­size-fits-­all approach focused
only on the dominant group, they have often disadvantaged language minority
students by failing to address their special needs, histories, and circumstances
(Quezada, Wiley, & Ramírez, 1999/2000). The lack of recognition of “non-­
standard” varieties of language, such as HCE, positions their speakers as merely
“substandard” articulators of English. The alleged “deficiency” was located in
the students, not in the educational system responsible for educating them.
The absence of accommodation policies for children who speak non-­standard
language varieties, such as Hawai‘i Creole English, Appalachian English, and
Ebonics, has often been ignored in discussion of the educational rights of lan-
guage minorities. The most important legal case in this area was Martin Luther
King Jr. Elementary School v. Ann Arbor Board of Education. Initially, this lawsuit
was brought as a racial discrimination case in which race, class, and language
were linked. Smitherman (1981), an expert witness during the trial, noted later
that “King began [and] ended with a claim against the institutional mismanage-
ment of the language of the children. . . . Our argument and Judge Joiner’s ruling
was that it is the obligation of educational institutions to accept it [Ebonics] as
legitimate” (p. 20). Several misunderstandings have developed regarding this
case. One is that the judge ordered Ebonics/Black English to be taught or pro-
moted in place of Standard English. To the contrary, he was only trying to
accommodate the children’s language differences. Another misperception is that
this case had the same authority as Supreme Court cases. King, however, was
decided only at the federal district court level. The school district, which lost
the decision, chose not to appeal; thus, its impact was only relevant in the Ann
Language Rights in the United States   75

Arbor district (Baugh, 1995). Nevertheless, the decision demonstrates the

potential of expediency policies for removing the sole burden for acquiring
Standard English from students who do not enter school speaking it (Wiley,
1999b).

Program Models for Language Minority Educational Rights

In order to evaluate access to educational language rights, it is useful to analyze
the various types of program models prescribed by legislation or otherwise avail-
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able, and to consider their particular goals for language minority students vis-­à-
vis the dominant society and their aims for language and literacy development.
Table 4.4 summarizes program models for bilingual education in the United
States.
As Lyons (1990/1995) has noted, the intent of one of the initial sponsors of
federal bilingual education programs, Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas, was
to address the needs of Spanish-­speaking children. Initially, the proposal for
bilingual education had strong bipartisan support, with some three dozen bills
being put forth. In a compromise move to expedite passage of the legislation,
the designated target population was redefined as being “children of limited
English-­speaking ability.” This shift in terminology away from Spanish speakers
had the appearance of being more inclusive. However, it also positioned the
target population as members of a “remedial” group, defined by the lack of pro-
ficiency in English. Amendments to the Bilingual Education Act of 1978 rela-
beled the target population as being “limited English proficient” (LEP) to
underscore the emphasis on reading, writing, comprehension, and cognitive
skills in English, yet, as Lyons (1990/1995) points out, “The new definition,
while arguably clearer and more comprehensive, reinforced the deficit approach
to educating language minority students” (p. 3). More recently, under the No
Child Left Behind Act (2001) LEP gave way to the term English language
learner (ELL), which is less overtly stigmatizing but masks the child’s native lan-
guage background (Wiley & Wright, 2004).
Under the Bilingual Education Act and its reauthorized versions, the major-
ity of programs offered bearing the “bilingual” label were short-­term transitional
programs and programs in English as a second language. In Table 4.4, these
models fall into the “weak” category because they fail to promote or maintain
native languages. Also, the societal and educational aims of these programs, as
well as their language and literacy goals, promote assimilation and monolingual-
ism (in English) respectively. So-­called educational reform measures, such as
Proposition 227 “English for the Children,” have sought to restrict even
“weak,” transitional models of bilingual education. From its inception in 1968
through its demise in 2001 with the end of Title VII funding, transitional bilin-
gual education remained “contested policy” (San Miguel, 2004).
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Table 4.4  A Typology of Bilingual Education

Type of Program Typical Child Language of the Classroom Societal and Educational Aim Language and/or Literacy Aim

Weak Forms for Promoting Bilingualism and/or Biliteracy

Submersion (aka structured Language minority Majority language Assimilation Monolingualism
immersion)
Submersion (with Language minority Majority language Assimilation Monolingualism
withdrawal of ESL)
Segregationist Language minority Minority language (forced, Apartheid Monolingualism
no choice)
Transitional Language minority Moves from minority to Assimilation Relative monolingualism
majority language
Majority language plus Language majority Majority language with L2/ Limited enrichment Limited bilingualism
foreign language FL Lessons
Separatist Language minority Minority language (out of Detachment/autonomy Limited bilingualism
choice)
Strong Forms for Promoting Bilingualism and/or Biliteracy
Immersion Language majority Bilingual with initial Pluralism and enrichment Bilingualism and biliteracy
emphasis on L2
Maintenance/heritage Language minority Bilingual with emphasis on Maintenance/pluralism and Bilingualism and biliteracy
language L1 enrichment
Two-way/dual language Mixed language minority Minority and majority Maintenance/pluralism and Bilingualism and biliteracy
and majority languages enrichment
Mainstream bilingual Language majority Two majority languages Maintenance/pluralism and Bilingualism and biliteracy
enrichment

Note
This table is adapted from Baker (1996, p. 172; see pp. 172–197 for elaboration). Note: L2 = second language; L1 = first language; FL = foreign language.
Language Rights in the United States   77

The Resurgence of States’ Rights: Implications for Language

Minority Rights
After nearly 60 years of progress in reversing the separate and unequal legacy of
segregation and undereducation of language minority children in the United
States (Blanton, 2005; San Miguel, 2004), the struggle for equitable education
for language minorities faces new challenges. Recent court decisions are allow-
ing states broader authority in determining policy and practice for the education
of language minority children.
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Why do states have such authority? The United States Constitution was
written and ratified in the late 18th century, a half-­century before the public
school movement gained prominence. Thus, at its beginning the federal gov-
ernment delegated responsibility for education to the states and local authorities.
Support for public education only began to increase in the late 1830s when
Massachusetts began promoting public education under the leadership of Horace
Mann (1796–1859). In 1862, with the passage of the Morrell Act, the federal
government began offering incentives to the states to promote institutions of
higher education. Following the conclusion of the Civil War, with the protec-
tion of federal troops, previously enslaved African Americans for the first time
were able to attend school during the period of Reconstruction (1865–1877).
From the end of Reconstruction until the 1950s, however, racial segregation by
the states was upheld by federal policies and the courts.
Those favoring state authority, or local control, over that of the federal gov-
ernment often invoke the doctrine of states’ rights, which refers to political
powers reserved for the state governments based on the 10th Amendment to
the US Constitution. Prior to the Civil War (1861–65), the doctrine of states’
rights was championed by advocates of the expansion of slavery. Following the
war, it was used to justify racial segregation and opposition to federally man-
dated desegregation and affirmative action. Under the Constitution, federal
authority trumps state authority, except when federal jurisdiction is deferred to
the states or restricted by federal law as interpreted by the federal courts, and
ultimately the Supreme Court.
State regulation of language intensified in the period during and after World
War I. The late 19th century through the early 20th century was marked by
large-­scale immigration first from Northern and Western Europe, and then
from Eastern and Southern Europe. Immigration laws were made stricter, and
legislation added entry requirements related to language and literacy (Leibowitz,
1969). During the World War I period, “Americanization” and English-­only
instruction were promoted as mechanisms for the assimilation of immigrants. In
an atmosphere of widespread anti-­German sentiment and xenophobia, many
states began restricting instruction in German and other languages (Wiley,
1998a). By 1919, 34 states had passed laws restricting instruction in foreign lan-
guages. The educational authority of states in imposing English-­only policies
78   T. G. Wiley

went relatively unchallenged until, in 1923, a challenge to restrictive policy,

Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 US 390 (1923), reached the Supreme Court.
Meyer, a parochial school teacher, was convicted and fined for breaking a
Nebraska law prohibiting foreign language teaching. Meyer appealed to the
Nebraska Supreme Court and lost. The Nebraska court reasoned that teaching
German to children of immigrants was unfavorable to national security and the
national interest. In 1923, the Supreme Court overturned the Nebraska court,
arguing that in peacetime, no threat to national security could justify the restric-
tion on teachers of foreign languages nor the limitation imposed on the parents
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who wished their children to learn them. By a seven to two vote, the Nebraska
law was held to be an infringement of the Due Process Clause of the 14th
Amendment (Edwards, 1923; Murphy, 1992; Piatt, 1992; Wiley, 1998a).
Although the Meyer ruling determined that unduly restrictive educational
language policies were unconstitutional, it established a weak precedent for edu-
cational rights. The court accepted the hegemonic view that all citizens of the
United States should be required to speak a common tongue (Murphy, 1992)
and it affirmed that the “power of the state to compel attendance at some school
and to make reasonable regulations for all schools, including a requirement that
they shall give instructions in English, is not questioned” (cited in Norgren &
Nanda, 1988, p. 188). Thus, the Supreme Court’s decision affirmed the official
status of English-­language instruction. Even after Meyer, however, German-­
language instruction never recovered to its pre-­war levels (Wiley, 1998a,
2010a).
In a related decision in 1927, Farrington v. Tokushige (273 U.S. 284, 298), the
Supreme Court, based on Meyer, ruled as unconstitutional the attempt by the
territorial governor of Hawai‘i to impose restrictions on private or community-­
based Japanese, Korean, and Chinese foreign language schools. Farrington was
not without significance, because a large number of such schools had been
established in Hawai‘i (Leibowitz, 1971) and California (Bell, 1935/1974),
many of which thrived during the 1920s and 1930s, just as similar schools do
today. These heritage language schools provided supplemental instruction in
native languages to the English-­only instruction provided in public schools.
During World War II, however, the right to Japanese instruction was prohib-
ited in the federal internment camps in which Japanese Americans were impris-
oned (US Senate, 1943/1974).
As was previously noted, the federal courts and the US Supreme Court are
the arbiters of conflicts between federal and state authority. Historically, the
Supreme Court, the federal courts, and the federal government have often sup-
ported coercive policies that have endorsed linguistic and cultural assimilation
through deculturation (Spring, 1994). Before the Civil War, the most explicit
example allowed for the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, who
were prohibited from using their native languages and were subjected to com-
pulsory illiteracy laws that made it illegal for them to acquire literacy in
Language Rights in the United States   79

English. After the Civil War, Native American children were forced to
undergo compulsory assimilation in boarding schools where English was man-
dated and their own languages were disallowed (Weinberg, 1995). These pol-
icies were relaxed in the 1930s, and language minority children received
greater accommodations beginning in the 1960s, with the rise of federally
funded bilingual education programs. During the Civil Rights era of the 1960s,
the role of the federal government became important in accommodating the
educational access and equity needs of language minority students. During the
Johnson administration (1963–1969), the US Congress approved transitional
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bilingual education to accommodate the needs of the growing (largely Spanish-

­speaking) minority student population. In 1968, the Bilingual Education Act
was implemented and the federal government permitted the use of transitional
bilingual instruction to accommodate the language development needs of lan-
guage minority students (San Miguel, 2004). In 1990, with the passage of the
Native American Languages Act (NALA), the federal government actually
endorsed promotion-­oriented policies favoring the preservation of American
Indian languages.

The Case of Lau v. Nichols

In 1974, six years after the passage of the Bilingual Education act, the US
Supreme Court ruled in Lau v. Nichols et al. (414 U.S. No. 72-6520) that
schools were obligated to accommodate non-­English-speaking students so they
could learn the language of instruction. Lau was the most significant legal case
with implications for language minority students’ educational rights since Meyer.
As historical background to the case, several facts are worth noting. First, the
case was filed in San Francisco. California, like many other states, had a prior
history of discriminating against racial and language minorities. At one time,
discrimination on the basis of race had a legal basis in state law. Anti-­Chinese
groups even succeed in lobbying the US government to pass the Chinese Exclu-
sion Act of 1882, which restricted Chinese immigration for 10 years. In addi-
tion, segregation of Asian-­origin students was legal in California from the late
19th century to the mid 20th century. As late as 1943, the California Constitu-
tion had affirmed legal segregation of schoolchildren of Indian, Chinese,
Japanese, or “Mongolian” parentage. This provision was not overturned until
1947. In 1905, the San Francisco School Board passed a resolution calling for
the segregation of Japanese and Chinese students, arguing that its intent was

not only for the purpose of relieving the congestion at the present pre-
vailing in our schools, but also for the higher end that our children should
not be placed in any position where their youthful impressions may be
affected by association with pupils of the Mongolian race.
(Resolution, 1905/1974; emphasis added)
80   T. G. Wiley

As in many educational discrimination cases, litigation resulting in Lau was

born out of the frustration of failed efforts on the part of parents and commun-
ity activists to receive appropriate educational programs for language minority
children. According to Li-­Ching Wang, a community leader involved in the
four-­year litigation, the Chinese-­American community held meetings with the
San Francisco school administrators over a three-­year period. They had “con-
ducted numerous studies that demonstrated the needs of non-­English speaking
children, proposed different approaches to solve the problem,” and staged dem-
onstrations in protest of district inaction (De Avila, Steinman, & Wang, 1994,
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p. 13). As a last resort, Chinese-­American parents and community leaders filed a

lawsuit in 1970 based on the following facts:

1. 2,856 Chinese-­speaking students in San Francisco Unified School District

(SFUSD) needed special instruction in English.
2. 1,790 [Chinese-­speaking students] received no help or special instruction at
all, not even the 40 minutes of ESL [provided to some students].
3. Of the remaining 1,066 Chinese-­speaking students who did receive some
help, 623 received such help on a part-­time basis and 433 on a full-­time
basis.
4. Only 260 of the 1,066 Chinese students receiving special instruction in
English were taught by bilingual Chinese-­speaking teachers (De Avila,
Steinman, & Wang, 1994, p. 14).

The lower courts rejected the arguments of the plaintiffs. In 1973, the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals also sided with the school district, concluding:

The discrimination suffered by these children is not the result of laws passed by
the state of California, presently or historically, but is the result of deficiencies
created by the children themselves in failing to know and learn the English
language.
(cited in De Avila, Steinman, & Wang, 1994, p. 16; emphases added)

Twenty years after the Lau decision, Edward Steinman, the attorney who had rep-
resented Kinney Lau, lamented that the attitude expressed by the court “says that
the child is inherently sinful for having the audacity not to know English when he
or she enters the classroom” (De Avila, Steinman, & Wang, 1994, p. 17).
In delivering the 1974 opinion of the Supreme Court that rejected the rea-
soning of the Ninth Circuit Court and the school district, Justice William O.
Douglas focused on the connections between language and race, ethnicity, and
national origin as he concluded:

The failure of the San Francisco school system to provide English lan-
guage instruction to approximately 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry
Language Rights in the United States   81

who do not speak English, or to provide them with other adequate

instructional procedures, denies them a meaningful opportunity to parti-
cipate in the public educational program and thus violates § 601 of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination based on “the
ground of race, color, or national origin,” in “any program or activity
receiving financial assistance.”
(Lau et al. v. Nichols et al., 414 U.S. No. 72-6520;
reprinted in ARC, 1994, p. 6)
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Contradicting the entrenched notion that schools are not “legally or morally
obligated to teach English,” Douglas concluded:

Basic English skills are at the very core of what these public schools teach.
Imposition of a requirement that, before a child can effectively participate in the
educational program, he must already have acquired those basic skills is to make a
mockery of public education. We know that those who do not understand
English are certain to find their classroom experiences wholly incompre-
hensible and in no way meaningful.
(Lau et al. v. Nichols et al., 414 U.S. No. 72-6520;
reprinted in ARC, 1994, p. 8; emphasis added)

Contrary to a common misunderstanding, Lau did not mandate bilingual educa-

tion. The plaintiffs had not requested a specific remedy, and Douglas left the
prescription of possible remedies open, stating, “Teaching English to the stu-
dents of Chinese ancestry is one choice. Giving instructions to this group in
Chinese is another” (cited in ARC, 1994, p. 7). As Crawford (1992) notes, “In
the 1970s, however, federal authorities did not hesitate to take the next step
with the so-­called Lau Remedies” (p. 226). The Lau Remedies attempted to
spell out appropriate expediency-­oriented policies that could be implemented in
schools. However, these were subsequently withdrawn under the Reagan
administration (see Crawford, 1995). Nevertheless, using transitional bilingual
education as a remedy was prescribed in several district court cases. The first
was Serna v. Portales Municipal Schools (1974; Serna was also affirmed by the 10th
US Circuit Court of Appeals). Other important district court cases prescribing
the remedy of transitional bilingual education include U.S. v. Texas (1981) and
Rios v. Reed (1978; see Leibowitz, 1982). However, neither in Lau nor in
related cases such as Serna did the courts address the constitutional issue of equal
protection under the 14th Amendment. Rather, rulings were based on legisla-
tive protections against discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Piatt,
1992).
The issue of determining whether or not school districts have complied
with  the Lau ruling was left to federal courts to resolve (Jiménez, 1992). The
definitive case, to date, is Casteñeda v. Pickard (1981). As Jiménez notes, the
82   T. G. Wiley

s­ignificance of Casteñeda is that it laid out an analytical framework, or three-­part

test, by which “appropriate actions” by school districts “to overcome language
barriers” could be assessed (p. 248): any prescribed remedy must (1) be based on
sound educational theory; (2) have a reasonable plan for implementation,
including the hiring of appropriate personnel; and (3) produce positive educa-
tional results.
There were modest attempts to establish standards for federally funded pro-
grams during the 1970s, but there was little attempt at enforcement during the
Reagan administration (1981–1989). Nevertheless, some progress during the
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1980s and 1990s was made in developing transitional bilingual programs and
culturally responsive teacher preparation programs. During the same period,
however, advocates of English-­only instruction sponsored restrictive official
English legislation in the US Congress. Although these efforts failed at the
federal level, there was a simultaneous strategy carried out in various states,
which was more successful in promoting English as the official language.

Restrictive Policies in Arizona

A number of recent studies (Arias & Faltis, 2012; Gandara & Hopkins, 2010;
Johnson, 2012; Lillie et al., 2010; Lillie, Markos, Arias, and Wiley, 2012; Wiley,
Lee, & Rumberger, 2009) utilizing a variety of research methodologies (includ-
ing historical and interpretive policy analysis, case studies, large-­scale surveys,
qualitative evaluations, interviews, and classroom observations) have assessed the
implementation and impact of state policies on language minority children.
Collectively, these studies conclude that legal precedents being established in
Arizona have particularly significant implications for the struggle for educational
equity and language minority rights in the United States.
In 2000, Arizona, with voter approval of Proposition 203, opted to imple-
ment a restrictive educational language policy that limited bilingual education
in public schools. Following the passage of Proposition 203, the state dictated
changes in instructional policy by prescribing “structured English immersion”
(SEI) as the mandated instructional model for language minorities. By so
doing, the state began a protracted process of limiting the professional choices
of educational administrators and teachers, as well as the choices of parents in
determining the educational options for their children. As Johnson (2012)
notes:

Ideologically engineered policies such as Proposition 203 are designed to

control habits of social interaction. While promoted as a benevolent
attempt to give language-­minority students the “gift” of English . . . the
underlying premise of Proposition 203 views minority languages as a
deficit.
(n.p.)
Language Rights in the United States   83

In addition, the state has implemented new curricular standards for teacher
education that position teachers as technicians who “have little control over
most of the mechanisms that determine professional standards” (Darling-­
Hammond, 2001, p.  260). Moore (2012) and Murri, Markos, and Estrella
(2012) have studied the policy formation, content, and implementation of Ari-
zona’s SEI training program, along with the preparation of pre-­service and
novice teachers. Overall, they find major weaknesses in teacher preparation and
conclude that a major goal of preparation programs is to promote an English-­
only ideology. An ongoing concern in Arizona is whether ideology has trumped
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professional knowledge and research (Krashen, MacSwan, & Rolstad, 2012).

Arizona provides an important case study in the reassertion of states’ rights,
because Arizona’s current structured English immersion model claims to be
grounded on “scientific-­based” research. In states such as California and Arizona
that have restricted bilingual education and imposed structured English immer-
sion, there is growing evidence that the model is not meeting the needs of lan-
guage minority students. In Arizona, for example, a growing number of
researchers (Lillie et al., 2010, 2012; Arias & Faltis, in press) are finding that
Arizona’s SEI model does not appear to be theoretically sound or evidence
based, as Casteñeda requires. The model is seen as conflicting with second lan-
guage acquisition (SLA) research, and by design, Arizona’s SEI four-­hour block
of class time segregates language minority students from native speakers of
English, who could serve as models for English use and developmental inter-
action. Wright and Sung (2012), on the basis of a survey of elementary teachers
in the state, concluded that Arizona’s initial attempts at compliance with the
federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law (Public Law 107-110), while simul-
taneously implementing Proposition 203, were largely inadequate and superfi-
cial. Nevertheless, as a result of Horn v. Flores (2009) the US Supreme Court is
allowing the state considerable latitude in defining and implementing its pro-
grams. This represents a strategic shift, in positioning states’ rights over the edu-
cational rights of language minority children.
The No Child Left Behind Act has also led to important changes in federal
policy that have made it easier for states such as Arizona to experiment with their
own policies. In 2001, NCLB dropped any reference to bilingual education,
which was followed by a major shift in labeling the offices established during the
civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. The former Office of Bilingual Education
and Language Minority Affairs (OBEMLA), for example, was replaced by the
Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA). The National Clearinghouse
on Bilingual Education (NCBE) was replaced by the National Clearinghouse for
English Language Acquisition (NCELA). According to García (2005), these
changes signaled a strategic shift in official discourse, whereby students’ language
minority status was replaced by the amorphous label “English language learners.”
Thus, with the elimination of the former OBEMLA, the federal role in promot-
ing accommodations for language minority students was substantially weakened,
84   T. G. Wiley

even as states such as Arizona and California had become bolder in imposing
restrictions on bilingual education. This shift in federal policy enabled states to
exert more authority in determining their own policies.
As Leibowitz (1971) suggested, it is useful to link language policies to a larger
set of domains. Over the past two decades, Arizona has attempted to implement
restrictions across a wide range of domains. The state has (1) fought a lawsuit
(Flores v. Arizona and Horne v. Arizona) since 1992 against spending increased
supplemental monies to accommodate the education of language minority stu-
dents; (2) approved Proposition 203, “English for the Children,” in 2000,
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which restricted bilingual education and imposed structured English immersion;

more recently, (3) the state passed a law making English the official language of
the state; while (4) simultaneously making it illegal to teach undocumented
people English in publicly funded adult ESL; followed by (5) passing a law that
revokes the business licenses of those who knowingly hire undocumented
workers, which became a model for other states to emulate (most recently
Alabama; see Editorial, 2011) and which has resulted in widespread panic in
some Hispanic communities (Constable, 2011; Robertson, 2011); (6) made it
illegal to teach ethnic studies in Tucson (Lacey, January 1, 2011); and (7) sought
to sanction teachers with accented English (Lacey, September 25, 2011).
Beyond this, those who supported such efforts are now proposing – contrary to
the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution – that children born in the United
States should not be allowed citizenship if their parents are undocumented
(Preston, 2011).

Conclusion
The history of access to educational language rights in minority languages, from
the colonial period to the present, indicates a mixed bag of official and unoffi-
cial policies. At present, support for the right of language minority children in
the United States to maintain their languages remains protected as a private
activity based on Meyer. Unfortunately, the prospects for attaining the goal of
promotion-­oriented language rights exist mostly outside the domain of federal
education policy through the efforts of charter school two-­way immersion pro-
grams, freelance community-­based organizations, and private efforts. The
Native American Language Act (NALA) represents the only federal policy that
endorses maintenance and promotion of languages other than English.
In many respects, restrictive state policies such as those of California’s Pro-
position 227 and Arizona’s Proposition 203, and the disposition of the Supreme
Court in Horne v. Flores (2009), represent a return to the restrictive policies of
the Americanization Movement (1914–1925) (Wiley, 1998a), which favored
the rapid assimilation of language minorities through English-­only instruction.
This return has been enabled by federal courts and the Supreme Court, which
allow states greater authority in determining appropriate educational practice for
Language Rights in the United States   85

language minority students. In essence, what has happened in the past two
decades is a return to states’ rights. Unfortunately, some of the most politically
charged discourse in decades is now aimed at “illegal children,” as coordinated
state efforts call for a repeal of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship
to anyone born in the United States. It is clear that the struggle for language
minority rights in the United States has taken a step backwards in the past 20
years, and that stronger federal protection against states’ rights is needed to
protect the minority from an increasingly oppressive majority.
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5
RIGHTING LANGUAGE WRONGS
IN A PLURILINGUAL CONTEXT

Language Policy and Practice in Nicaragua’s

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Caribbean Coast Region

Jane Freeland

Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast is a multi-­ethnic, plurilingual region whose seven

languages represent a surprisingly wide variety of sociolinguistic situations
within a relatively small geographical area, all interconnected in a complex
‘sociolinguistic ecology’ (Haugen, 1972/2001). Costeños (Coast people) today
claim symbolic allegiance to six original ethnic languages. Some of these are no
longer in daily use, others show considerable vitality, and others are endangered;
some are written and almost standardized, while others manifest socially import-
ant internal variation and dialect loyalties.
Since it became the object of competition in the seventeenth century
between Spanish and English colonial ambitions, the region has been an almost
archetypal ‘contact zone’: a space ‘where disparate cultures meet, clash, and
grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination
and subordination – like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are
lived out across the globe today’ (Pratt, 1992, p. 4). Indeed, the ethnogenesis of
all its peoples has been radically influenced by these relations.1
During the Sandinista revolution (1979–1990), serious attempts were
made to respond to demands from the Coast’s indigenous and ethnic minori-
ties for the new revolutionary state to recognize their historically oppressed
cultures and languages and support their maintenance and revival. They
made these demands using the ‘strategically essentialist’ (Spivak, 1988) dis-
course evolved by the international and regional indigenous movements of
the 1970s, which itself expanded upon contemporary international declara-
tions of rights. Eventually, a legal framework recognizing these rights was
painfully negotiated with the Sandinistas, which subsequent governments
have ratified and implemented with more or less political will over the past
30 years.
92   J. Freeland

Consequently, Nicaragua is an interesting crucible in which to observe some

of the problems that attend such a project in the multilingual, contact circum-
stances described. One underlying problem, whose effects have been well
studied, has been the conditions of increasing poverty within which the revolu-
tionary government and all its successors have had to operate (Batibo, 2009;
Brenzinger, 2009; Romaine, 2009). My main focus here, however, is a diffi-
culty that has received relatively little attention: the constant mismatch between
the language ideology underpinning the language rights discourse of govern-
ment policy and those of the different Costeño groups targeted by that policy. Its
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translation from the abstract, legal page to specific sociolinguistic contexts

increasingly revealed that the supposedly universal discourse of rights was differ-
ently interpreted by all the parties to the negotiation according to their particu-
lar language ideology. By language ideologies, I mean

cultural representations, whether explicit or implicit, of the intersection of

language and human beings in a social world. Mediating between social
structures and forms of talk, [they] do not just concern language . . ., they
link language to identity, power, aesthetics, morality and epistemology
[and] through such links . . . underpin not only linguistic form and use,
but also significant social institutions and fundamental notions of persons
and community.
(Makihara & Schieffelin, 2007, p. 14)

Through a series of situated case studies, this chapter will describe how these
ideological differences played out on the ground, and will argue that unless this
‘universal’ discourse is deconstructed and reinvented in light of such differences,
it may actually do more harm than good. In this way, it aims to contribute to
the growing postmodern, critical sociolinguistic literature on language rights
(e.g. Blommaert, 2010; Cameron, 1995; Pennycook, 2001; Ricento, 2009;
Williams, 1992).
I use ‘postmodern’ here in the sense outlined by Pennycook (2009), to signal
an intention not merely to question some central assumptions of the hegemonic
language rights discourse, ‘the very concepts of language, policy, mother
tongues, language rights, and so forth, that have been the staples of language
planning’ (p. 62), but to suggest ways of developing less abstract, more situated
principles of developing language rights policies.
The chapter draws on my work in the region since 1980 as an ethnographic
researcher of several Costeño groups, and a teacher of university courses in soci-
olinguistics to students drawn from all of them. There are four section. The first
describes the region’s sociolinguistic ecology and its historical formation. The
second outlines the process by which Nicaragua’s legislation on diversity and
minority rights was negotiated with Costeños and sets it within its political and
ideological context. In the third and principal section, a series of case studies
Righting Language Wrongs   93

illustrates the difficulties created through the mismatch between the ideological
assumptions underlying this policy and the region’s complex multilingual
ecology. The conclusions section draws from these specific cases some general
implications for the recognition of language rights, especially in plurilingual
ecologies.

The Caribbean Coast Region: A Contact Zone

Since Spain first colonized Central America’s western, Pacific Coast region in
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the sixteenth century, and English settlers occupied the eastern, Caribbean
Coast region from the seventeenth century, the two regions have followed con-
trasting but intertwined historical processes that produced two distinct social
formations with opposed images of each other. Pacific Region society
developed according to the Hispanic American ideal of mestizaje (economic,
racial, cultural and linguistic assimilation and blending), which brought about
the near-­demise of most of its indigenous communities, identities and cultures.
The Mestizo, Spanish-­speaking Nicaraguan state has continually, but unsuccess-
fully, striven to assimilate the Caribbean Coast region.
In contrast, the Caribbean Coast region is a diverse, plurilingual contact
zone. It is home to three indigenous groups: the Miskitu (population 125,869),
the Sumu-­Mayangna (19,370), of whom the Ulwa are a sub-­group (600)
(Green, 1996), and the Rama (1,290). Two African-­Caribbean groups are more
recent arrivals: the Creoles (27,197), descendants of slaves imported from
Jamaica in the eighteenth century, or later migrants from the Caribbean; and
the Garífuna (3,440), who arrived as migrant loggers in the nineteenth century.2
The Mestizo presence has grown, especially since the 1960s, as the state has
encouraged land-­hungry peasants to colonize ‘virgin land’; by 1995, Mestizos
constituted almost 76% of the total population (population data from PNUD
[2005] and McLean Herrera [2008]).
The ethnogenesis of these groups began long before the entry of Europeans
into Central America, as small indigenous groups competed for resources or
allied in trade (González Pérez, 1997; Gurdián, 2001; Offen, 2002, 2010;
Romero Vargas, 1995). European contact began in the mid-­seventeenth century,
as Spain and England vied for control of this geopolitically strategic area. In this
struggle, the English settlers formed a special alliance with the Miskitu, establish-
ing a form of indirect rule through a Miskitu leader designated as king.
Following Nicaragua’s independence from Spain (1838), as the Pacific-­
region Mestizos sought to create a unified nation-­state incorporating the Carib-
bean Region, and the United States sought to establish its exclusive sphere of
influence, Britain was gradually forced out. Nevertheless, Costeños remained
determined to defend the autonomy they felt they had enjoyed under Anglo
rule. The region was militarily ‘reincorporated’ (in Mestizo parlance) only in
1894, though resistance continued whenever the opportunity arose. Its latest
94   J. Freeland

manifestation was a Miskitu-­led uprising against what the Miskutu viewed as

the ‘Spanish’ Sandinistas in the 1980s, which became co-­opted into a US-­led
counter-­revolutionary war. In this unstable context, indigenous and ethnic
claims for cultural rights became politically highly charged (see Baracco, 2011;
Dunbar Ortiz, 1984; González Pérez, 1997; Gordon, 1998; Hale, 1994; Offen,
2002, 2010; Vilas, 1989).
In 1987, following two and a half years of peace negotiations, a new Consti-
tution proclaimed Nicaragua ‘a multi-­ethnic nation’, and a related Statute of
Autonomy granted extensive political, cultural and economic rights to the
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peoples of the Coast. Until the early 2000s, language rights received the most
sustained attention; since then, there has been steady progress on demarcating
and titling the historic territories the indigenous people have consistently
claimed as indispensable to their political and economic rights.
One product of this turbulent history is a shifting political and economic hier-
archy among Costeño groups, reflected in and maintained by a corresponding
hierarchy of symbolic power among their languages. In the eighteenth century,
the Miskitu’s special alliance with the British gave them economic and military
power over other indigenous groups, among whom their language became a
lingua franca. At the same time, they began to develop a sense of themselves as a
‘nation’ (Helms, 1971, p.  158, n. 1), taking pride in speaking English to mark
their status as a ‘European-­like people’ different from the ‘wild Indians’ (Holm,
1978, pp.  39, 50). Today, they still value both English and multilingualism
(Dennis, 2004). Miskitu dominance, particularly over the Sumu-­Mayangna, was
further cemented in the nineteenth century by Moravian missionaries who trans-
lated the Bible into Miskitu, taught Miskitu lay pastors to read and write their
language, and later trained them to lead the indigenous church, even among the
Sumu-­Mayangna (see Freeland, 1995). This activity simultaneously extended the
prestige and range of the Miskitu and limited those of the Sumu-­Mayangna.
In the south of the region, the Moravians evangelized among the Creoles
and the Rama in English, then the regional lingua franca. Through their
English-­medium schools, the Creoles acquired the literacy that fitted them for
clerical and management jobs in the US enclaves and contributed to their
gradual ascendancy over all other non-­white groups. Here, Moravian language
policy brought about the replacement of Rama by English within a generation.
The Creole ascendancy, however, was checked by the region’s ‘reincorpora-
tion’ in 1894 and the imposition of strict Hispanicization policies, which pro-
scribed education in any other language, making English a quasi-­minoritized
language (Holm, 1978).
When the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, Spanish was incontestably at
the top of the hierarchy of ethnic and linguistic power. English ran it a close
second, although, as we shall see, its position was more complicated. Neverthe-
less, it was valued by all groups as a passport to better-­paid jobs in the US
enclaves or on Caribbean cruise ships.
Righting Language Wrongs   95

Third in the hierarchy came Miskitu; although now subordinated to both

Spanish and English, it remained the language of the Moravian church among
both the Miskitu and the Sumu-­Mayangna, and the only written indigenous
language. Sumu-­Mayangna, in contrast, had become multiply subordinated, not
only to Spanish and English, but most immediately to Miskitu. Consequently,
while Miskitu is relatively close to being standardized, two distinct varieties of
Sumu-­Mayangna are still spoken, to which the Sumu are strongly loyal.
Most linguistic and anthropological studies of the region have noted language
(and cultural) shifts whose direction depended on local inter-­group contacts and
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pressures. Especially in the urban areas, people of all ethnias moved increasingly
towards Spanish. The Miskitu communities studied by Helms (1971) and Niet-
schmann (1973) were shifting towards English and Creole ways, while a rapid
influx of Miskitu workers into the US gold mines and lumber camps in their
neighbourhood pushed Ulwa and some Sumu-­Mayangna communities towards
Miskitu (Green, 1996; Green & Hale, 1998; Holm, 1978; Norwood, 1985).
The Garífuna, generally renowned as good multilinguists, abandoned Garífuna
under Creole racist pressure from around the 1950s (Freeland, 1994), while
Rama appeared to be limited to a handful of speakers in small, isolated settle-
ments (Craig, 1992a).
However, the term ‘language shift’ is an oversimplification in this context, to
the extent that it implies a definite, and also a recent, transition from one language
into another. In fact, there is good evidence of a centuries-­old tendency in this
region to adopt the language of neighbouring community groups. Indeed, Bene-
dicto and Hale (2000) describe the region as a long-­established and well-­defined
‘linguistic area’ where ‘the syntactic structures of the present-­day [Miskitu and
Sumu] languages exhibit the characteristics of grammatical “merger” not uncom-
mon in such areas’ (p. 97). Some groups shifted language but retained their ori-
ginal ethnic affiliation (Jamieson, 2003), others developed bilingual identities in
varying degrees, like the Miskitu-­Creole community of Kakabila (Jamieson, 1998,
2001), while yet others acquired a new ethnic physiognomy (Gurdián, 2001) and
reascribed themselves. This evidence suggests that Costeños have historically used
the languages in their environment to perform complex, multifaceted identities in
intercultural relationships that we are only beginning to understand.
For all these reasons, the region’s indigenous and ethnic groups should not
be conceived in essentialist terms as discrete, internally homogeneous blocs
defined by bounded, discrete languages and inhabiting equally bounded, dis-
crete territories (Freeland, 2003). As a contact zone (Pratt, 1992) par excellence,
this region should rather be approached through a different kind of ‘linguistics
of contact’ (Pratt, 1987, p. 50), one that focuses not on languages per se but on
‘the operation of language across lines of social differentiation . . . on modes and
zones of contact between dominant and dominated groups, [and] on how such
speakers constitute each other relationally and in difference, how they enact differences in
language’ (p. 60, my emphasis).
96   J. Freeland

Language Rights: The Early Negotiations

Although the Sandinistas were broadly aware that the Coast was multi-­ethnic
and plurilingual, and that some Coast languages were dying or nearly extinct,
they openly admitted their lack of experience of the region and their ignorance
of its complexities (Calderón, 1981). Freeland (2011) has detailed the difficult
dialectic that shaped Nicaragua’s language rights policies. The indigenous groups
couched their demands in the discourse of Latin America’s growing indigenous
movements, for which cultural recognition entails both the symbolic and the
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material manifestations of culture: not only language, artefacts and beliefs, but
also territorial rights and political self-­determination. However, the Sandinistas’
initial response took language to be the main bearer of culture, assuming that
language rights and cultural rights were synonymous. Freeland (2011) suggests
that these mismatches in the construction of this key concept helped trigger the
armed indigenous uprising against the Sandinistas of the 1980s.
From 1983, the Sandinistas began seeking a political solution to the conflict
through what came to be known as the ‘autonomy process’, a three-­year-long
consultation around the different understandings of ‘autonomy’ by the various
Costeño groups. This process, involving peace talks with rebel leaders, village-­
to-village discussions, and pilot projects to provide practical demonstrations of
how autonomy might work on the ground, taught the Sandinistas to differenti-
ate more clearly the claims of different ethnias. Between 1986 and 1987, it ran
parallel with a comparable consultation in the Pacific Region around constitu-
tional reform. Both processes culminated in the passing of a new national con-
stitution and a related Statute of Autonomy (Law No. 28), both of which
redefined Nicaragua as a ‘multi-­ethnic nation’, a novel concept at the time
which has since become a feature of many Latin American constitutions.
The Autonomy Statute not only recognized the limited cultural rights of the
early years, but also recognized that they were inseparable from broader eco-
nomic and sociopolitical rights. In this respect, it led the way in Latin American
diversity legislation. All the communities of the Caribbean Coast were to enjoy
‘absolute equality of rights and duties, regardless of the size of their population
and level of development’ (Art. 11.1, my emphasis), rights to traditional terri­
tories (Arts. 9 and 11.6) and the right to a degree of political self-­determination
within them (Arts. 4 and 7) (see ODACAN, 1994, the official English transla-
tion of the Autonomy Law).
As with ethnic groups (to which the term ‘communities’ refers here), so with
their languages: there would be no discrimination on grounds of speaker
numbers or state of development (or decline). Whether still in use or not, all
the Coast’s languages acquired official status within the region (Art. 7). All
groups would have the right to ‘promote and develop their languages, religions
and cultures’ (Art. 11.2), and ‘to be educated in their own languages’ (en su
lengua materna), through ‘programmes that take into account their historical
Righting Language Wrongs   97

­ eritage, their traditions and the characteristics of their environment, all within
h
the framework of the national education system’ (Art. 11.5).
In 1993, these provisions were expanded through a Law of Official Use of
the Community Languages of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (Law No. 162;
see ODACAN, n.d.). This extends the use of ‘the official languages of the com-
munities’ as the medium of instruction throughout primary education (Art. 7.c)
into ‘bilingual-­intercultural’ teacher training (Art. 7.4) and adult education (Art.
7.5). Provision is made for them to be taught also ‘in courses in intermediate
education’ (Art. 7.3c) (though not used as the medium of instruction). Although
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it falls well short of providing a fully bilingual system, this law does lay the
foundation for a maintenance model of bilingual education. Second, it specifies
the public contexts of official use: in official and legal documents (Art. 19),
signage (Art. 13), contracts (Art. 14), civil registration (Art. 15), the administra-
tion of justice (Chapter III) and public administration (Chapter IV), all contexts
hitherto reserved for Spanish. In practice, use of Coast languages in teacher
training began around 2003, and in adult education in a few Miskitu and Creole
communities by 2005; however, these languages do not yet appear to be taught
in the post-­primary sector. Lack of support for the training of bilingual or trilin-
gual administrative officials, police, judges, translators and interpreters has left
their use in many public contexts ad hoc and informal.
In language rights terms, then, Nicaragua’s language legislation went consid-
erably beyond the stipulations of most contemporary international agreements;
it guaranteed all minority groups education in their ‘mother tongue’, and in
principle offered their languages overt protection, promotion and maintenance
(Skutnabb-­Kangas & Phillipson, 1994; also see Skutnabb-­Kangas, 2000).
However, the following case studies show how difficult it was to translate
these abstract, egalitarian principles to specific sociolinguistic contexts; as often
happens with translation, critical differences in the interpretation of key terms
were revealed. The case studies centre particularly on two main areas of diffi-
culty: differences in conceptions of the relationship between language and
ethnic identity (and indeed of ‘identity’ and ‘language’ themselves), and the
decision to make formal education the main site for minority language revitali-
zation and maintenance.

‘Rights in Places’: Situated Case Studies3

An underlying limitation on the implementation of these policies has been the
dire economic conditions with which Nicaragua has struggled since the revolu-
tion. Their effects are well documented in a series of evaluations and reports,
many written for the international NGOs that became an indispensable source
of finance for the bilingual intercultural programmes (PEBI) (e.g. Amadio,
1989; Buvollen et al., 1992; Freeland & McLean Herrera, 1994; Gurdián &
Salamanca, 1990; McLean Herrera, 2001, 2008; Muñoz Cruz, 2001; Rizo
98   J. Freeland

Zeledón, 1996; Venezia Mauceri, 1996, 2001). All detail the effects of eco-
nomic restrictions imposed first by war and US blockade, and then by Interna-
tional Monetary Fund (IMF ) structural readjustment programmes restricting
public spending; even today, education spending is limited to 3% of GDP.
These circumstances made it difficult to raise the low educational level of indi-
genous teachers, or to develop expertise in such relevant disciplines as linguis-
tics, anthropology and psycholinguistics that Nicaragua lacked. Thus, the
programmes have relied heavily on expatriate expertise, including the MIT-­
based Linguists for Nicaragua (Rivas Gómez, 2004; special issue of Wani, 51,
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2007). Despite heavy odds, these reports also record impressive achievements:
expanding coverage of the target population, improvements in pupil participa-
tion, retention and progression through grades, and the production of culturally
appropriate materials to meet this expansion.
However, some reports (e.g., Muñoz Cruz, 2001; Venezia Mauceri, 2001)
also allude briefly to negative effects of ‘community attitudes’ towards the pro-
grammes, which they interpret as the result of a simple failure to communicate
policy aims to the communities. These attitudes, which I treat as matters of local
language ideology, are my focus here.

Language, Identity and ‘Mother Tongue’

Different interpretations of the concept of ‘mother tongue’ education quickly
became a major stumbling block. Costeños in framing their claims, and legislators
in responding to them, initially appeared to share this central concept in the
international discourse of language rights upon which they all drew. However,
the legislators’ sense of ‘mother tongue’ is rooted in the Germanic tradition of
ethnic nationalism, which assumes an ‘organic connection between a people
(Volk) and its “mother tongue”, a single, natively-­acquired vernacular which
defined the people as a group and distinguished them from other groups’
(Cameron, 2007, p. 278). This was, indeed, the basis on which Western nation-­
states had traditionally excluded ethnic minorities (Rampton, 1995; see also
Pennycook, 2002, Ricento, 2002).
This construction of the concept is fundamental to the bilingual-­intercultural
education model adopted by Nicaragua from other parts of Latin America. As
Hornberger and López (1998) point out, though, its development has been
‘generally . . . restricted to contexts of indigenous monolingualism or of incipi-
ent bilingualism’, and it has proved difficult to apply in more multilingual con-
texts (p. 232). So, the PEBI presupposes a neat isomorphism between three of
the several senses of ‘mother tongue’ first highlighted by Skutnabb-­Kangas
(1981, pp. 12–34): first learned, most used, and language of (ethnic) identifica-
tion – not always found in such contexts. Its goal is to give children a firm
grounding in these ‘mother tongues’ and their related ‘mother cultures’, so to
speak, whence they can move outwards into Spanish and the ‘national and
Righting Language Wrongs   99

­ niversal culture’ it bears (Ministerio de Educación, 1989, quoted in Amadio,

u
1989, p. 74). This model of multilingualism as a set of bilingual pairings in fact
excludes the plurilingual, cross-­cultural relationships that characterize this multi-
lingual contact zone.
Consequently, the PEBI initially failed in its first egalitarian principle: to
serve the language rights claims of all Costeños. Only in mono-­ethnic rural com-
munities of the monolingual or incipiently bilingual type for which the model
was developed is the community language the ‘mother tongue’ in all the above
senses. There (saving its other difficulties), the PEBI does fulfil all the main lan-
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guage rights claims: it gives children the cognitive advantage of learning in their
first language and so facilitates progression to Spanish and other languages; it
helps strengthen their ethnic identity through teaching materials based in their
culture and history; and it helps revitalize their language by extending its use
from the community to prestigious new domains. Unsurprisingly, surveys in
such communities have registered high rates of approval for the programmes
(Bonilla, Hansack, & Williams, 2000; McLean, 2001).
However, in the ethnically mixed, bi- or multilingual communities described
in the previous section, or in those forced by history to adopt another language,
the ‘mother tongue’ (= L1) is not the original ethnic language; here the original
cultures are practised through the adopted language (Jamieson, 2001, 2003). Yet
these communities invariably refer to the ‘lost’ language of ethnic identification
as their ‘mother tongue’.4
In these communities, the ‘mother tongue’ programme is delivered in the
children’s L1: Miskitu for the Ulwa, English for the Creole-­speaking Rama and
Garífuna. In the bilingual Miskitu–Creole community of Kakabila, the situation
is even more complicated. Here, people self-­identify as Miskitu and consider
Miskitu their ‘proper language’, but most children speak Creole at least until
adolescence, while the two languages and cultures form the basis of a complex
‘moral economy’ (Jamieson, 2003). Allowed to choose, Kakabila opted to
receive the 1980s literacy campaign and the PEBI in English, which they con-
sider most appropriate for literacy (Jamieson, 1998).
In such communities, then, the PEBI functioned as a classic transitional bilin-
gual programme, fulfilling only the first of the above language rights: to early
education in their first language. It did not assist the recovery or regeneration of
their ‘mother tongue’ (= language of ethnic identification), nor help strengthen
their ethnic identity, because the ‘mother tongue’ learning materials are based in
the ‘mother culture’ of the language they are written in; if anything, the PEBI
pushes these communities further towards that culture and away from their own.
Apprised of the Autonomy Law, the Ulwa and Rama were quick to claim an
education in their ‘mother tongues’ (= original ethnic language). During the
Sandinista period, the Ministry of Culture had facilitated (though it could not
directly fund) solidarity work on these languages by MIT’s Linguists for Nicara-
gua (Craig, 1992b). These linguists helped communities to understand the
100   J. Freeland

impossibility of using their languages as the medium of instruction in formal

education, and instead encouraged the introduction of classes using Ulwa and
Rama songs and games that ran parallel to the ‘first language’ PEBI (Rivas
Gómez, 2004). However, despite promises in the 1993 Languages Law, such
state support ceased in the 1990s, and the Ministry of Culture’s facilitating role
has been assumed by the Centre for Research and Documentation of the Atlan-
tic Coast (CIDCA) and the Institute for Research and Promotion of Languages
and Cultures (IPILC) at the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Car-
ibbean Coast of Nicaragua (URACCAN). Gradually, a parallel system has
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evolved, somewhat comparable to US heritage programmes in its dependence

on tenacious and inspirational community leaders with expert support, though
it enjoys none of the direct state funding available in the United States (Fishman,
1991, 2001; Hornberger, 2005; McCarty & Watahomigie, 1999).
Each of these groups has evolved a programme that recognizes the state of
the language and community ambitions. So, Ulwa includes literacy and has
reached fourth grade (McLean Herrera, 2008), whereas the Rama programme
provides a quite limited, but symbolically important, competence (Grinevald,
2003). The Garífuna preferred to focus revitalization on their central healing
ritual, the Walagallo, and on dance, with language as a natural adjunct. All the
programmes have enabled bottom-­up development, allowing the communities
themselves to decide whether, when and how to realize their right to education
in their ‘mother tongue’. However, Kakabila, with its dual Miskitu–Creole
moral economy, is still ill served. Having chosen to receive their ‘mother
tongue’ PEBI in English, associated in their ideology with literacy and formal
education, they have no support for the Miskitu side of that identity, since this
develops in adolescence, whereas the PEBI is a primary-­school programme
(Freeland, 2003).
These cases demonstrate how treacherously polysemic is the concept of
‘mother tongue’, particularly in such multilingual contexts. Indeed, many
Costeño groups might never have used the term at all, were it not so prominent
in the hegemonic discourse of linguistic rights in which the autonomy legisla-
tion was rooted. The cases also show that top-­down policies cannot deal with
such variety; only when a measure of local control was allowed could appropri-
ate decisions be taken about how language rights might be fulfilled. I shall
return to this point in the Conclusions section.

Language Revitalization and Formal Education

There is considerable debate over whether formal education is a suitable site for
language revitalization (Fishman, 1991, 2001; Hornberger, 2008). Yet in Nica-
ragua, the decision to realize language rights through the education system was
almost inevitable. Given the pressures on a socialist revolution under fire, and
the dire economic conditions precipitated by that revolution and its aftermath,
Righting Language Wrongs   101

only state support could assure equal attention to all languages. Yet this decision
became the source of almost as many difficulties for some groups as it resolved
for others. The problems turned largely on the speed with which literacy and
writing entered the equation.
As with the notion of ‘mother tongue’, both legislators and Costeños ostensi-
bly agreed on the importance of literacy for subordinated ethnic and indigenous
languages, though again for rather different reasons. For the legislators, it
accorded with the dominant ‘Western’ language ideology that places written
languages at the top of a Darwinian scale of ‘language development’ (Dorian,
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1998), as though only they were proper languages. As we saw earlier, Costeños
had come into contact with writing in different ways; since it was indeed a key
factor in constituting the regional hierarchy of symbolic power, they had all
internalized a version of this ideology. Consequently, literacy was freighted with
symbolism (Craig, 1992a; Freeland, 2004). This was particularly the case for the
Sumu-­Mayangna, whose ambition was for their language to acquire the written
form denied it by Moravian language policy. In accordance with the PEBI’s
aims, efforts were made from the outset to take account of oral histories and
traditions, but only by transcribing their content as a basis for early reading texts.
Although promotion of the Sumu-­Mayangna oral culture to writing satisfied
group ambitions, it also overlooked the importance in the Sumu-­Mayangna’s
oral culture of internal variations in their language, assuming that these would
be resolved through standardization.
Indeed, in Latin America, standardization as a solution to (often extreme)
internal variation in indigenous languages has been actively promoted for at least
thirty years, not only to promote literacy but also

as an instrument to overcome the subaltern condition of the Indigenous

languages . . . [and] to generate among [their] speakers a feeling of belong-
ing to a larger linguistic community with a shared common heritage: the
sense of belonging to a ‘people’ who thus transcended local affiliation.
(López, 2008, pp. 57–58, my emphasis)

The echo of Anderson’s (1993) definition of ‘peoples’ as ‘imagined communi­

ties’ bound by a common language is unmistakable. Yet as both Pratt’s (1987)
and Irvine and Gal’s (2000) comments on Anderson remind us, the unifying
languages of those communities were themselves imagined, by politicians and
linguists. More to the point, their imagining often produces the very exclusions
and inequalities that language rights policies now aim to remedy.
In the case of the Miskitu, there already existed a strong sense of ‘people-
hood’ (Helms, 1971), and their history of mediating trade between the British
and other indigenous groups and then of missionary literacy had led to consid-
erable convergence among the four Miskitu dialects. Nowadays, although there
is still no official standard, the need to develop one is apparently not felt.
102   J. Freeland

Although the Bible literacy developed by the Moravians was limited to religious
contexts, it has proved a useful foundation for secular literacy in the PEBI.
Rather than on standardization, the Miskitu have focused on creating a more
authentic orthography than that developed by the German-­speaking missionary
linguists. Some of this work has been carried out in collaboration with the
Honduran Miskitu (Freeland, 1995) and helps fortify the sense that the Miskitu
‘people’ transcends national frontiers.
The Sumu-­Mayangna, in contrast, have only recently begun to conceive of
themselves as a ‘people’ in this Euro-­American sense (Frank Gómez, personal
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communication); arguably, the Miskitu’s vanguard presentation of early indi-

genous rights claims played a role in introducing the idea. Most Sumu-­
Mayangna refer more readily to a ‘Sumu family’ that includes the Panamahka,
Tuahka, and (in Honduras) Tawahka sub-­groups, whose identities are marked
by the dialects they speak. Although there is sufficient formal overlap between
them to qualify them as variants of one ‘language’, they retain distinctive lexical
and morphological features (Benedicto & Hale, 2000), whose social value is still
great enough for the Sumu-­Mayangna to resist the idea of standardization. In
developing the literacy manuals for the 1980 Literacy Crusade, the Sumu-­
Mayangna technical team had originally proposed bi-­dialectal texts with variants
in brackets placed side by side, to avoid privileging either dialect. In the event,
the final version was in Panamahka only (interviews with Sumu technical team
in Bilwi, 1987, and with Gloria Fenly Cisneros, who used the manual in her
community); it is unclear whether this was an economic decision or an effect of
the superior demographic weight of Panamahka speakers, or both.
The texts for the bilingual programmes piloted during the autonomy process
were based on these readers, so that by the time the PEBI came into existence,
Panamahka was fast becoming a de facto standard. Besides, early directors of the
‘Sumu PEBI’ were all Panamahka (the first Tuahka director was appointed only
in 2006) who held that differences between the two variants were too slight to
justify separate textbooks, and that Tuahka speakers could easily accommodate.
This was interpreted by some Tuahka as an attempt to ‘disappear their mother
tongue’, relating it to ancient wars between the two groups (Frank Gómez, 2006).
The upshot has been to make Tuahka an icon of a group identity to be defended.
Discussions with Tuahka speakers about the mutual intelligibility of the two
dialects reveal considerable disagreement; those more militant for Tuahka deny
it, while others say that cross-­variant communication is easy. Of course, this
simply demonstrates that mutual intelligibility is less a matter of linguistically
analysable formal overlap than of speakers’ will to emphasize or minimize differ-
ences through ‘acts of identity’ (Le Page & Tabouret-­Keller, 1985), according
to whether common membership of the Sumu family or community differences
are uppermost in the interaction. As the case of the former Yugoslavia has illus-
trated, this can quickly become a political process that constitutes separate lan-
guages (Tollefson, 2002; see also Makoni & Pennycook, 2007).
Righting Language Wrongs   103

To avoid such balkanization, solutions are being sought which reflect the bi-­
dialectal approach first mooted by the literacy technical teams. In 1999, a
common Sumu orthography, which enables all groups to write their own
variant, was developed in consultation with both Tuahka and Panamahka com-
munities (Benedicto, 2000). With international financial support, it has been
used for a collection of women’s stories for older readers in both Tuahka and
Panamahka, a bi-­dialectal first book for kindergarten children, and a bi-­dialectal
children’s dictionary developed and published by a Sumu-­Mayangna team of
linguists led by Benedicto. Benedicto (2000) notes the positive effects of this
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approach ‘in the interaction between the [Tuahka and Panamahka] members of
the working teams [which] is changing attitudes . . . through knowledge of the
cultural reality of the “other” ’ (p. 23). Paradoxically, then, the intended
enhancement of Sumu-­Mayangna through writing has created tensions that
have hindered, rather than assisting, the language revitalization which is one of
the PEBI’s declared purposes, and divided rather than unifying the Sumu-­
Mayangna ‘people’.
However, these developments by no means resolve all the problems of the
Tuahka, whose iconization has coincided with its displacement by Miskitu in
the Tuahka communities. Consequently, they find themselves caught in the
same bind as the Ulwa, Rama, and Garífuna communities discussed in the pre-
vious section. Tuahka is claimed as the ‘mother tongue’ (= emblem of identity),
but in most Tuahka homes, Miskitu is the family language and ‘mother tongue’
(= L1) of most children; though many understand Tuahka, they resist speaking
it (Freeland & Frank Gómez, forthcoming).
The PEBI model’s emphasis on formal education and literacy has also created
problems for realizing Creole language rights, which are also compounded by
its assumptions about ‘mother tongue’. For these, neither the solutions being
tried with the Sumu-­Mayangna nor the heritage solution are appropriate. In
Creole parlance, their language is ‘English’; the term covers both Kriol and
Standard (Caribbean) English (SCE). In Creole communicative practice,
though, these are not two separate systems (like Tuahka and Panamahka) but a
continuum of styles ranging from ‘deep Creole’ through to SCE. Consequently,
their conception of ‘mother tongue’ is even more variable than that of the
Sumu-­Mayangna (Freeland, 2004).
Nor does variation in this case mark separate sub-­group identities. According
to Gordon (1998), the Creoles

historically inhabited three transnational identities simultaneously, with

the popularity and salience of each varying historically. [They] can be
identified by the names Creoles have called themselves. . . . Creole black
diasporic identity is signified by their calling themselves blacks (negros), . . .
Creole Anglo diasporic identity . . . by their calling themselves Creole . . .
and Creole indigenous identity . . . by their calling themselves Costeños.
104   J. Freeland

Each identity marks a different boundary from, and allows different alli-
ances with other Coast groups, but all signal difference from the Mestizos,
the group the Creoles perceive as most distant and most threatening.
(pp. 194–195)

These identities also form a continuum, one or another becoming more salient
according to the immediate social context, and over historical time; Creoles
indicate which is salient by moving their speech fluidly along the continuum in
acts of identity (Le Page & Tabouret-­Keller, 1985).
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However, formal education has split this continuum into two opposed parts.
The Moravian Mission school policy, as in most Anglophone Caribbean
schools, was to teach in Standard (Caribbean) English (SCE) and proscribe ‘bad’
Kriol speech, a practice which has associated SCE firmly with the ‘Anglo’ facet
of Creole identity, with education, literacy and refinement, while Kriol is
defined as ‘bad English’, unwritten and ‘illiterate’. Outside school, though, it
remains for young and adult alike the main marker of Creole group identity,
used with verve and relish to perform an oral culture that often subverts the
‘Anglo’ proprieties (Freeland, 2004, p.  110). In the 1970s, its association with
the Black Creole identity was strengthened through incipient Garvey-­inspired
black nationalism (Gordon, 1998), which was particularly pronounced among a
group of ‘Black Sandinista’ university students in Managua.
The Creoles made their language claims of the revolution from their third,
indigenous, Costeño identity position, demanding the right to mother-­tongue
education in English rather than Kriol. Yet only the Kriol end of the contin-
uum was their ‘mother tongue’ in all the senses we explored earlier; SCE was so
only as the language of identification with the Anglo strand of the Creole iden-
tity. In many Caribbean countries there is a struggle to have creoles recognized
as separate languages, but the Nicaraguan Creole language ideology insisted that
Kriol was a dialect of English – a source of pride, but not appropriate for educa-
tion. This insistence was prompted by fears of being ghettoized into Kriol and
denied the English-­medium education they considered integral to their identity.
In the Sandinistas’ ‘monomorphic’ (Gordon, 1998) conception, which associ-
ated clear-­cut ethnic identities with equally clear-­cut mother tongues, this posi-
tion appeared slippery, evasive and contradictory, a likely indicator of Creole
sympathies with US imperialism.
Counter-­arguments came from the Black identity perspective: ‘to teach
standard English would be to impose an alien language and culture . . . as is hap-
pening now with Spanish’ (Yih & Slate, 1985, p. 56), while both identity posi-
tions shared the view that Kriol language and its culture would inevitably be
devalued by education in SCE. The terms of this argument forced people to
make politicized either/or choices between what were in daily communicative
practice aspects of both a speech and an identity continuum (Freeland, 2004).
This has seriously hampered the development of the English PEBI. What is
Righting Language Wrongs   105

needed is a trilingual system that can accommodate these antitheses, strengthen

both Kriol and SCE, and ensure good Spanish competence. Indeed, the English
programme has been constantly destabilized as it has moved through trial and
error towards such a system.
Creole educators quickly acknowledged that Kriol must enter the classroom,
but admitted it only in small doses, like a vaccine, limited to informal, oral
interaction, with SCE as the language of literacy. This approach, however,
merely widened the gap between the two; teachers educated in Spanish and
unsure of their own SCE went by the book, ‘correcting’ children’s spontaneous
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writing towards SCE and so missing a critical stage in the development of both
speech and writing (Hurtubise, 1990). Reading texts were based on the rich
Kriol story tradition but rendered anomalously into SCE. The dichotomy
between Kriol = spoken dialect/SCE = written language was reinforced, as was
the shift away from Kriol that Black Creoles feared. Parents who had the choice
(for instance in the main town) opted out altogether, moving their children
back to Spanish-­medium schools or, if they could, paying for the traditional
education of the Moravian College.
During the Sandinista period, popular cultural institutions promoted by the
Ministry of Culture had provided alternative sites for legitimating Black Creole
language and culture outside the school system, free of the shadow of SCE, fos-
tering oral history projects, Afro-­Caribbean music and poetry, performed orally
and published in a variety of orthographies. Experience in other contexts sug-
gests that some such parallel development may be essential to maintain Kriol’s
vibrancy. When this parallel support ceased with the fall of the Sandinistas in
1990, the burden of supporting Kriol and SCE fell entirely on the PEBI. Not
only did its pedagogical problems continue, but the feeling grew that in this
context, Kriol and its culture were being suppressed, now by both Spanish and
SCE. Creoles who had revelled in the fluidity and freedom of Kriol began
pressing for it to be written, to prove that it was a ‘proper language’. This ‘solu-
tion’, however, capitulates to Western privileging of written languages and, by
giving Kriol some quasi-­standardized form that must be used ‘correctly’, risks
destroying precisely what they seek to validate: its essential fluidity and its sub-
versive value.
In 2004, a project sponsored jointly by URACCAN and the Finnish gov-
ernment, in collaboration with the Belizean Creole Council, began developing
a Nicaraguan Kriol orthography. Modelled on that of Belize (the two Kriols
have much in common), it balances proximity to SCE (for ease of transition)
with sufficient distance to maintain distinctiveness, with interesting concessions
to the Spanish-­speaking context. A first reading primer (FOREIBCA/IPILC,
2003), also adapted from a Belizean model, carried stories in Kriol written and
illustrated by the Kriol speakers themselves. So far, the orthography has been
used most successfully in teacher training, to help teachers work confidently and
appropriately in both Kriol and SCE. A 2004 workshop, where students told,
106   J. Freeland

wrote, compared, modified and elaborated traditional and modern stories in

Kriol and discovered its differences from SCE, illustrated how, well handled,
writing could become a means to celebrate, strengthen and project oral Kriol
rather than a damper on its vitality.

Conclusions
These cases illustrate a range of problems attendant on implementing the
abstractions of a language rights-­based policy in multilingual areas like Nicara-
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gua’s Caribbean Coast region, where each group and its language has its place
in a complex ecology. It is arguable that some of these were specific to the Nic-
araguan situation, attributable primarily to the legislators’ ignorance of the
region’s sociolinguistics, and their failure to undertake appropriate preliminary
research before taking precipitate action, however urgent the pressures on the
revolution. Besides, the external advice taken by the Sandinistas encouraged
them to embrace the hegemonic discourse, whose limitations could only
emerge through real, contextualized experience.
At the simplest level, the almost literal transposition into Nicaragua’s legisla-
tion of the equality envisaged in the language rights discourse demonstrates the
truth of Grin’s observation (1994, p. 38) that ‘when the respective positions of
languages in contact are different’, as clearly they are on the Coast, ‘minority
language survival requires an asymmetric policy’, with carefully differentiated
treatment for each language. The question then is: How should differentiation
work? If the assumption is that language wrongs will be righted when subordi-
nated languages reach parity of function with dominant languages, then perhaps
differentiation simply means giving most support to those most distant from this
goal. This is the implicit assumption of current language policy, especially in
tying language revitalization to the state education system. This assumption has
been strongly influenced by Catalan linguists such as Cobarrubias (1987) and
Ninyoles (1972). However, while such parity makes sense in Catalunya’s two-­
language situation, with its history of overt political repression of a vibrant liter-
ary language, it is more problematical in multilingual situations such as
Nicaragua’s.
Here, the counter-­arguments of such as Mülhäusler (1996) and Nettle and
Romaine (2000) are persuasive: that languages survive and thrive when they fulfil
specific, clearly differentiated social functions within an ecology. If parity of func-
tion becomes the goal, though, what we have is not an ecology but a competition
where those at the back will never catch the frontrunners. This has certainly been
the case in Nicaragua: the Sumu-­Mayangna, for instance, tend to judge their own
progress, or lack of it, in terms of what the Miskitu have achieved that they have
not, and to suspect that they must be receiving more support. The same competi-
tion rules have led the Tuahka to demand their own ‘mother tongue’ programme,
at impossible expense in the economic circumstances and with little regard for
Righting Language Wrongs   107

Tuahka’s real circumstances. The race to equality has brought only disparity,
inequality and division.
As the case studies illustrate, in the bottom-­up treatment of near-­obsolete
‘mother tongues’, differentiation takes a different form, and no such competi-
tion has ensued. Instead, communities were encouraged and supported to define
realistically for themselves the functions for which they wish to develop and
maintain their languages, which range from the literary (Ulwa) to the purely
symbolic (Rama). For this kind of differentiated attention, of course, local
control is essential; it has enabled the gradual revitalization of Ulwa, Rama and
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Garífuna, and might help resolve the tug of war over Tuahka and Panamahka.
Some degree of local control was envisaged in Article 8.2 of the Autonomy
Law, which proposed gradual devolution of education to the Autonomous
Regional Councils, ‘in coordination with the corresponding State Ministries’.
The precise details of this coordination might possibly have been negotiated
with the Councils during the process of elaborating the Autonomy Law had the
Sandinistas remained in power. However, all successive governments baulked at
losing control of such a key state apparatus.
In any case, as Hornberger points out (2000), the very decision to promote
minority language rights through state education creates a paradox: it entails
transforming a system that ‘has been and continues to be a tool for standardiza-
tion and national unification into, simultaneously, a vehicle for diversification
and emancipation. The paradox is fundamentally an ideological one about roles
and possibilities for multiple languages and their speakers within one national
society’ (p. 174). This paradox is clearly illustrated in the problems that have
attended the PEBI in Sumu-­Mayangna and English. Indeed, it was already
inherent in the two declared goals of Article 11.4 of the Autonomy Law (and its
later elaboration): to provide programmes that include the minorities’ ‘historical
heritage, value system, and traditions’ but are nevertheless ‘in accordance with
the national education system’. This begs the question: How can such ‘accord-
ance’ between different value systems be achieved?
Immediately after the Sandinista defeat, central government values and
national unity prevailed absolutely over indigenous values and diversity; school
texts were centrally vetted and cultural content such as Miskitu traditional
stories and accounts of the Garífuna’s central healing ceremony were rejected as
‘superstitions and witchcraft’ (Buvollen, 1991; Venezia Mauceri, 1996).
Realization of this aspect of the Autonomy Law thus became an object of
struggle. Especially following ratification of the Law on Languages, there began a
process of taking advantage of whatever openings were afforded by World Bank
and IMF decentralization, whose purpose was primarily economic. Gradually,
through strategic political alliances between parties in the Regional Councils, dec-
larations from Latin American and Nicaraguan Congresses on Intercultural-­
Bilingual Education, and the coordinating actions of the regional university
URACCAN (established in 1995), an Autonomous Regional Education System
108   J. Freeland

(SEAR) was hammered out with the Ministry of Education. In 2001, the SEAR
was incorporated into the National Education Plan; in 2003, it became an
article in the National Education Law, which was finally ratified under the new
Sandinista government of 2006–2011. This has enabled curricular reform to be
discussed in a new context involving all national and regional levels of educa-
tion administration, the Autonomous Regional Councils, coordinators of the
PEBI programmes, directors of Normal Schools (secondary schools that provide
basic teacher training), URACCAN, traditional authorities, parents and school
pupils (see McLean Herrera, 2008, for a useful overview). This is the context
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that increasingly facilitated the kind of bottom-­up treatment of those ‘mother

tongues’ that had fallen into disuse. Even so, the balance between the value
systems and traditions of the target groups and the national education system is
still firmly tilted towards the national rather than the local (McLean Herrera,
2008).
At a different level of analysis, these cases illustrate that the language rights
discourse is far from being universally applicable. Most of the difficulties dis-
cussed have arisen from differences of interpretation of its most central concepts.
These are most acutely evident in the confusion caused by the notion of
‘mother tongue’, which the language rights discourse sees as the expression of a
single, essentialized identity. However, for many Costeño groups – those that
have developed multifaceted, dynamic identities involving more than one lan-
guage – this concept forces them into simplistic either/or choices at odds with
their communicative practices.
At issue here, in fact, are different understandings not just of ‘mother tongue’
but of ‘languages’ themselves. A useful way into these is through Silverstein’s
distinction between ‘language communities’ and ‘speech communities’ (1998).
He defines ‘language communities’ as ‘groups of people by degree evidencing
allegiance to norms of denotational (aka ‘referential’, ‘propositional’, ‘semantic’)
language usage however much or little such allegiance also encompasses an indi-
genous cultural consciousness of variation and/or change’ (p. 402). As he points
out, in the

heretofore unproblematized European and colonial conceptualization of

things, . . . methodological recognition of ‘languages’ and their structures is
based in the European experience of explicitly theorizing denotational
usage as encompassed under ‘grammar’ or ‘structure’ and of leaving
everything else in the semiotics of verbally mediated interaction to the
realm of ‘rhetoric’ or even vaguer notions.
(p. 406)

Such theorizations, then, treat local variants as dialects of ‘the same language’ (p.
405). Speech communities, on the other hand, share ‘perduring, presupposable
regularities of discursive interaction’; they can ‘encompass speakers who belong
Righting Language Wrongs   109

to more than one language community’, sharing with them understandings of

the ‘occasion types’ for which one or another language is appropriate (p. 407).
The language rights discourse, the basis of both Costeño claims and legislative
responses, assumed that Costeño groups were ‘language communities’. Accord-
ingly, the Ministry of Education proposed, and Costeños accepted, a Sumu pro-
gramme, a Miskitu programme and an English programme. Yet certain groups
– the Miskitu of Kakabila, with their dual Miskitu–Creole identity, or the
Sumu-­Mayangna Tuahka married to Miskitu and living in mixed communities
– identify rather with a larger speech community encompassing both languages.
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For them, the ‘language’ programme, with its monolingual assumptions and its
reliance on definitions of languages as denotational systems, comes into conflict
with their bilingual speech-­community practices. It is arguable that the appar-
ently unreasonable demands of the Sumu-­Mayangna Tuahka for recognition of
their own variant as ‘a language’ owe something to this unrecognized difference
between local ‘speech community’ and Western ‘language community’ con-
cepts, leading towards a proliferation of ‘languages’ and of speaker-­peoples
claiming rights to them that is detrimental to language survival.
These situated Nicaraguan experiences, then, provide ample evidence that if
the language rights discourse is to provide any guarantee for minority languages,
all its underlying concepts need deconstructing and reinventing in light of the
local language ideologies of the target groups whose rights are to be vouchsafed.
Indeed, it may be that in such multilingual situations as Nicaragua’s, which is
relatively simple by comparison with, say, that of many regions of India or
Africa, the idea of ‘language rights’ should be abandoned in favour of a broader
concept like ‘linguistic citizenship’ (Stroud, 2001; Stroud & Heugh, 2004; see
also Khubchandani, 1997), grounded in local complexities. If not, this discourse,
with all its ideals, may actually do more harm than good.

Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many sources of support for the work on which this chapter
draws: Portsmouth University, UK, for regular research leave; the British
Academy for a travel grant (2000) and Small Research Grant for joint research
(2005–2006); the Proyecto Sahwang (sponsored by Terranuova, Italy; KEPA,
Finland; and IBIS, Denmark) for sponsoring my teaching on the Licenciatura
(BA) in Intercultural Bilingual Education of the University of the Autonomous
Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (URACCAN) (2000–2003); and
SAIH (Norway) for supporting the URACCAN Community Diploma in Soci-
olinguistics for the Revitalization of Sumu-­Mayangna (2010–2011). The moral,
intellectual and logistical support of URACCAN’s Institute for the Promotion
and Investigation of Languages and Cultures (IPILC), through its Director,
Guillermo McLean Herrera, and its Coordinator in Rosita, Eloy Frank Gómez,
has been invaluable. Finally, I thank many Costeños and Costeñas for their patient
110   J. Freeland

responses to my curiosity about their lives in language. The usual disclaimers

apply.

NOTES
1 Hill (1996, p.  2) defines ‘ethnogenesis’ as the dynamic process by which ethnic and
indigenous groups maintain ‘enduring identities in general contexts of radical change
and discontinuity . . . a synthesis of people’s cultural and political struggles to exist as
well as their historical consciousness of those struggles’ which is expressed in their
myths and oral histories.
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2 Designations are complex and contentious (González Pérez, 1997). The term Costeño is
used to claim a common, regional identity opposed to the mainstream, Mestizo culture
of the Pacific Coast region. Legal documents, such as the Nicaraguan Constitution
(1987) and the Autonomy Law (1987), use ‘indigenous and ethnic groups’ to cover all
groups, for which neither component is sufficiently inclusive, and I adopt this usage
here. Until recently, the Sumu-­Mayangna and the Ulwa were known collectively, and
self-­referred, as ‘Sumu’. However, to avoid the pejorative connotations this name had
acquired, especially in Miskitu usage, the Sumu-­Mayangna abandoned it in favour of
‘Mayangna’, which is also not universally accepted; the Ulwa, for instance, regard
themselves as part of the Sumu ‘family’ but not as Mayangna (Benedicto & Hale, 2004).
I adopt here the hyphenated form, ‘Sumu-­Mayangna’, now stipulated by the Sumu-­
Mayangna indigenous authorities for both the group and its language.
3 The quotation is the title of Blommaert (2004).
4 In the matrilocal Sumu-­Mayangna and Miskitu villages, mother tongue also denotes
simply the mother’s language, even when the son or daughter does not speak it (Free-
land, 2003). The modification from ‘mother tongue’ to ‘official language of the com-
munity’ (lengua official de la comunidad) in the 1993 Law on Official Languages does not
resolve the issue. First, few Costeños are aware of this term, and second, they are all
familiar with the language of the Autonomy Law, which makes all mother tongues
official.

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6
POSITIONING THE LANGUAGE
POLICY ARBITER

Governmentality and Footing in the School

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District of Philadelphia

David Cassels Johnson

This chapter examines power within language policy processes: who has the right,
or is positioned as having the right, to control the creation, interpretation, and
appropriation of language policy? Critical approaches (Tollefson, 2006) have
focused on the use of macro language policy to marginalize minority languages and
minority language users, while ethnographic work (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007,
2011) has tended to focus on the power of agents (e.g., teachers) in language policy
processes. This chapter offers a balance between these two approaches. Although
the ability of macro policies and discourses to hegemonically constrain language use
in schools and communities is an accepted tenet within the field, how this works is
not always well documented. What is required is a multi-­layered analysis, focusing
in particular on how language policies are interpreted in different ways across dif-
ferent contexts, with appropriation influenced by local policies, discourses, and ide-
ologies. In a discussion of language policy layering, Blommaert (in press) notes the
“number of hegemonies that co-­occur in a social event . . . with macro-­hegemonies
(e.g., the official language policy) playing into and against meso- and micro-­
hegemonies (e.g., one’s own ways of organizing practices, or more local pressures
on performance).” This chapter examines these “local pressures”: how particular
elements in speech events position certain educational agents as experts, or arbiters,
of language policy while, at the same time, marginalizing others as mere receivers
or implementers of policy.

Critical Language Policy and the Ethnography of Language

Policy
Research in language planning and policy (LPP) has progressed from work that
examined the steps in national language planning (Fishman, 1979; Haugen,
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   117

1983) to critical conceptualizations that emphasize the power of language pol-

icies to marginalize linguistic minorities and minority language education. Plan-
ning Language, Planning Inequality (Tollefson, 1991) represented a paradigmatic
shift in the field (then predominately referred to as “language planning”) by
challenging the notion that language planning was ever apolitical. Instead,
Tollefson proposed the historical-­structural approach to LPP research, which
foregrounds the power of language policies to promote the interests of domi-
nant social groups, marginalize minority languages and users, and perpetuate
social inequality. As proposed and articulated in subsequent publications (e.g.,
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Martin-­Jones & Heller, 1996; Tollefson, 2002, 2006; Watson-­Gegeo & Gegeo,
1995), critical language policy (CLP): (1) eschews apolitical LPP approaches and
instead acknowledges that “policies often create and sustain various forms of
social inequality,” and that “policy-­makers usually promote the interests of
dominant social groups” (Tollefson, 2006, p.  42); (2) seeks to develop more
democratic policies that reduce inequality and promote the maintenance of
minority languages; and (3) is influenced by critical theory.
In its earlier stages, the field of LPP was dominated by macro-­level theories
and models, which led to calls for more on-­the-ground data about language
policy implementation (Davis, 1999; Ricento & Hornberger, 1996) and to spe-
cific case studies (e.g., Cincotta-­Segi, 2011; Hornberger & Johnson, 2007; Hult,
2004; Johnson, 2010b; Menken, 2008; Stritikus & Wiese, 2006). Findings from
around the globe suggest that national language policies can and do restrict mul-
tilingual education and marginalize language minorities and minority language
education (Olson, 2007), either because they are overtly restrictive or because
measures within the policy, like a heavy emphasis on testing, lead to a de facto
push for monolingual education (Menken, 2008; Shohamy, 2006). On the
other hand, national multilingual language policies can and do open spaces for
multilingual education and minority language development (Hornberger, 1998,
2009).
Nevertheless, the relationship between macro language policy and social
practice is neither linear nor predictable. For one thing, national language pol-
icies are not necessarily ideologically consistent and may be characterized by
divergent, even contradictory, ideas about language use and education; more-
over, analyses of the policy language alone may not accurately predict their
interpretation and appropriation (Jaffe, 2011; Johnson, 2009). As Hornberger
(2009) points out, a national policy may fail if local support is lacking. For
example, national policies that promote multilingualism and linguistic pluralism
might not be able to overcome dominant societal discourses that favor particular
(especially colonial) languages, monolingual education, or prescriptive and out-
dated language instruction (Bekerman, 2005; de los Heros, 2009; McKay &
Chick, 2001). On the other hand, the de jure aims of monolingual, top-­down
language policies do not necessarily translate into practice either; educators can
pry open implementational and ideological spaces that incorporate minority
118   D. C. Johnson

l­anguages, even within the confines of restrictive language policies (Hornberger

& Vaish, 2008; Johnson, 2010a; Stritikus & Wiese, 2006). Thus, Menken (2008,
p. 5) argues that teachers are the final “arbiters” of language policy implementa-
tion, and Menken and García (2010) offer many examples of teachers as
policymakers.
Hornberger and Johnson (2007) propose the ethnography of language policy
(ELP) as a method meant to capture multiple language policy processes (crea-
tion, interpretation, and appropriation) across multiple contexts (from the macro
to the micro) and, especially, the agency of language policy agents within these
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processes (Johnson, 2009). Despite the criticism of CLP that it overemphasizes

macro-­level language policy and therefore underemphasizes the power and
agency of language policy actors (Davis, 1999; Ricento & Hornberger, 1996),
ethnographic approaches and CLP are not mutually exclusive: Both are com-
mitted to resisting dominant policy discourses that subjugate minority languages
and their users. Further, when combined, these approaches offer an important
balance between structure and agency – between a critical focus on the power
of language policies and an ethnographic understanding of the agency of lan-
guage policy actors.

Governmentality
One of the “critical” aspects of CLP is that it is influenced by critical social
theory (Tollefson, 2006). For example, the Foucauldian (Foucault, 1978) sense
of “discourse” (along with work in critical discourse analysis [Fairclough, 1989;
Wodak, 1996]) has had a significant impact on CLP (Johnson, 2011; Tollefson,
2002; Wodak, 2006). Pennycook (2002, 2006) offers an intriguing line of
empirical and theoretical work, incorporating Foucault’s (1991) notion of gov-
ernmentality to make the case that LPP scholarship should focus less on official
policies and dominant ideologies and more on local discourses and educational
practices.
The notion of “governmentality” was developed by Foucault in a series of
lectures in 1978 and 1979; one of these from 1978 (entitled “Governmentality”)
has been published and reproduced (Foucault, 1991). Foucault defines “govern-
ment” not as a sovereign and singular power, but as an ensemble of multiple,
interconnected practices, including government of oneself, government within
social institutions and communities, as well as government of the state. Thus,
governmentality takes the focus off a singular state-­driven hegemony: “The state
. . . does not have this unity [as portrayed by others], this individuality, this rig-
orous functionality, nor to speak frankly, this importance” (p. 103). Instead, the
focus is on how power circulates across various contexts, within micro-­level
practices and discourses. Nevertheless, when a state is run well or efficiently,
individuals will, in turn, “behave as they should” (p. 92) – that is, in line with
the state – and therefore a certain amount of self-­governing is relied upon. In
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   119

this way, governmentality refers not merely to the governing of a state appar-
atus, but to the governing of individuals:

Government . . . [designates] the way in which the conduct of individuals

or of groups might be directed: the government of children, of souls, of
communities, of families, of the sick. . . . To govern, in this sense, is to
structure the possible field of action of others.
(Foucault, 1982, p. 790)
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Foucault’s multi-­layered conceptualization of governmentality lines up with

multi-­layered conceptualizations of language policy and the layering of hegem-
onies therein (Blommaert, in press). While acknowledging other types of gov-
ernment, Foucault primarily focused on the government of the state. This
chapter focuses on how governmentality operates at the level of social inter-
action among language policy agents – that is, how relationships of power struc-
ture the possible field of action of language policy agents. Specifically, the
government of a group of bilingual teachers is considered. To analyze how gov-
ernmentality operates at the micro level of social interaction within this group,
Goffman’s notion of “footing” (1979) is incorporated.

Arbiter Positioning and Footing in Language Policy

The results reported herein are based on a multi-­sited ethnography of language
policy and bilingual education (2002–2006) in the School District of Philadel-
phia (SDP).1 Ethnographic data collection emerged out of a series of action
research projects on language policy and bilingual education program develop-
ment with teachers and administrators. Of particular interest here are data col-
lected (documents, field notes, transcripts of recorded interviews and meetings,
and email among the participants) in what was called the Bilingual Articulation
Project, an initiative designed to align bilingual programs K–12 in one region of
the school district. I focus on how the speech events during this project were
shaped by policy texts and discourses as well as how language policy power was
negotiated within these events.
The meaning of a language policy is neither static nor the result of predict­
able interpretations of a policy document. Of course, a policy can explicitly or
implicitly promote or prohibit particular practices. But, as Wortham (2005)
argues, the meaning of a sign is “often indeterminate until subsequent utterances
contextualize focal signs” (p. 98); therefore, a trajectory of speech events should
be considered. Similarly, within a community of interactional participants, the
meaning of a particular language policy, or selected language therein, is not just
derived from the policy document; it also emerges within a series of speech
events within one layer and across multiple layers of language policy interpreta-
tion and appropriation.
120   D. C. Johnson

As well, this analysis highlights who has the right, or is positioned as having
the right, to make language policy decisions. Goffman (1979) proposes the
concept of “footing,” which refers to the participants’ alignment or positions in
an interaction. The relative footing of participants in an interaction characterizes
what Goffman refers to as the “participation framework,” which is engendered
by the “participation status” of each of the participants. Goffman suggests that
we can look at specific “cues and markers” to determine how participants align
with each other. Wortham (1996) has suggested that a particularly illuminative
cue is pronoun use, which can linguistically mark the positions of interaction
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participants by “indexing some person or group that occupies a particular inter-

actional role” (p. 333). The focus here is (1) the particular interactional roles in
language policy processes, and (2) how participant positioning impacts participa-
tion frameworks and the resultant language policy appropriation. I focus on
pronominal use within the texts, which linguistically marks the positions of
interaction participants and helps to explain how language policy power is
negotiated in language use and who gets positioned as a language policy arbiter.

Accountability and Flexibility in Federal Policy Text and

Discourse
It is impossible to understand language policy processes in the SDP without
some understanding of shifting federal educational language policy and the
repercussions for bilingual education in the United States. These policy shifts,
engendered by shifting discourses and instantiated in policy texts, help to set
limits on what is educationally feasible or, at least, “normal” – that is, they
create a hegemonic policy discourse to which local educators adapt. Thus, they
are an essential part of the discursive context of policy that shapes speech events
in school districts.
When the new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
titled No Child Left Behind (NCLB), was passed, in 2002, the text of the policy
suggested a dramatic shift in language education in the United States. Title III,
the primary language policy in NCLB, dictates who can receive funding and
what types of language education programs will receive federal support. Title III
abandoned the focus of the policy it replaced, Title VII (the Bilingual Education
Act), which promoted the value of multilingualism and bilingual education, and
instead shifted the focus to education in English (Evans & Hornberger, 2005;
Wiley & Wright, 2004). Yet the language of Title III does not explicitly pro-
hibit any particular educational program, and examination of NCLB’s creation
as documented in the Congressional Record reveals variations in intentions and
interpretations on the part of its creators (see discussion in Johnson, 2009).
A tension between structure and agency manifests in NCLB as a tension
between accountability and flexibility. In 2001, newly elected president George
W. Bush pushed an accountability and testing agenda for educational policy,
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   121

which was surprising to some observers since federally directed educational

accountability has not been a popular idea among political conservatives in the
United States, who instead tend to support flexible (or no) federal educational
policy. Thus, Bush and members of his administration had to make a case for
increased accountability in federal educational policy, which they did in two
ways: (1) they argued for the pedagogical benefits of testing; and (2) they
emphasized the new policy’s flexibility. For example, the US Department of
Education’s official position emphasized the space provided in Title III for mul-
tiple types of language education programs: “Title III does not endorse or
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promote any specific type of language education program for LEP students, and
states have the choice to use ESL or bilingual programs” (US Department of
Education, 2005). This press release highlights the choices available under
NCLB, at least when it comes to language education programs, and reflects the
official position of DOE administrators. For example, in a phone interview the
director of the State Consolidated Grant Division in the Office of English Lan-
guage Acquisition averred that her staff do not promote or prefer any particular
method and are, in fact, prohibited from doing so: “We stay completely out of
it” (telephone conversation, May 24, 2006). She stressed that it was up to the
states and schools to choose particular pedagogical programs for English lan-
guage learners (ELLs). The language in NCLB stresses flexibility at every turn,
using the word “flexibility” 105 times. The first line of the law, before the
name of the law is even stated, declares that the following is “An Act: To close
the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child
is left behind.”
Even ardent supporters of bilingual education, such as Ciro Rodriguez
(Democrat-­Texas) and Silvestre Reyes (Democrat-­Texas), were vocally in favor
of NCLB. For example, Reyes expressed concern about using standardized tests
in English for ELLs but still came out in favor of the tests and the policy:

Reyes:  [NCLB] gives students the flexibility to remain enrolled in bilingual

education as long as is appropriate. As part of the compromise the bill
requires students to be tested for English reading proficiency after their
third year in bilingual education. However, school districts can obtain a
waiver on a case by case basis to delay the test for two years. The results of
the test will have no direct high stakes effects on individual students, but
instead will be used to measure a school’s progress and hold it accountable
. . . These accountability measures promise to ensure that schools maintain
effective bilingual programs.
(Congressional Record, December 13, 2001)

Reyes did not see a connection between accountability and inflexibility, and he
supported NCLB as beneficial for bilingual education. He asserted both that the
accountability measures in particular would improve bilingual education and
122   D. C. Johnson

that NCLB in general would improve flexibility in local bilingual education

policy. Instead of holding individual students accountable, NCLB, in Reyes’
view, would hold schools accountable for maintaining effective bilingual
programs.
It is also of note that members of the Bush administration were supportive of
the flexibility of NCLB, specifically as it pertained to bilingual education. For
example, following the model set by California’s Proposition 227 (which
restricted access to bilingual education), a similar political campaign to eradicate
bilingual education took root in Colorado in 2002 (Amendment 31). During
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the debate, then secretary of education Rod Paige made a conspicuous visit to
Colorado, weighing in on the pro-­bilingual education side by declaring that
schools and parents should retain programmatic choice: “Decisions about the
proportion of English and a child’s native language should be made at the ‘point
of instruction’ ” (cited in Rothstein, 2006). Ostensibly, this was a response to
those who supported Amendment 31, which would have placed restrictions on
native language education, and here Paige declared that those responsible at the
point of instruction (i.e., teachers) should be the final arbiters of how to balance
multiple languages in the classroom.
Empirical research into its appropriation (e.g., Menken, 2008; Menken &
Shohamy, 2008) has shown that NCLB has proven to be anything but flexible.
Even though there is implementational space in Title III for a diversity of edu-
cational programs, including additive bilingual education (Johnson, 2010a), Title
I and the accountability requirements which focus on tests in English have made
it difficult for schools to maintain the integrity of their bilingual programs, and
at least some have shifted toward English-­focused programs because of the
English-­focused testing requirements. Shohamy (2006) has suggested that this
was the goal all along and that the testing of NCLB was intended as a de facto
English-­only policy. However, (1) there seem to have been multiple intentions
that went into the formation of NCLB, since (2) its multiple authors interpret
their creation (NCLB) in multiple ways, and (3) their interpretations of the
intentions of the policy often conflict (see discussion in Johnson, 2010a, 2011).
Thus, policy shifts at the federal level were not ideologically consistent or
homogeneous, and were instead characterized by heterogeneity in policy text
and discourse, which educators must interpret and appropriate for themselves.
Furthermore, the beliefs and actions of language policy agents cannot be charac-
terized as homogeneous either, and the interpretation and appropriation of
macro-­level language policy takes place across multiple contexts, all of which
contain their own set of local policy texts and discourses.

The Bilingual Articulation Project

The rest of this chapter considers the beliefs and practices of a small set of lan-
guage policy agents in the SDP, highlighting how they were positioned in
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   123

speech events that took place during the Bilingual Articulation Project (BAP).
Of particular interest is an ideological and language policy shift that occurred in
the middle of this project, which illuminated the tension between accountabil-
ity and flexibility as interpreted and appropriated by different educators. This
shift was, in part, engendered by a personnel shift in the main English-­for-
speakers-­of-other-­languages (ESOL)/bilingual education office (located in the
central administrative building in downtown Philadelphia) that is responsible for
the interpretation and appropriation of federal and state language policy.
It is important to understand a distinction in SDP institutional authority
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between what teachers (but not necessarily administrators) call “downtown” and
“the field.” “Downtown” refers both to the physical downtown administrative
building for the district and to the administrators who work therein; “the field”
refers to the educators in schools who are charged with implementing the pol-
icies downtown creates. Referencing this division, which is sometimes disparag-
ing, acknowledges a power differential between downtown and the field. For
example, I visited several elementary schools in the district for a brief period to
administer standardized tests. One day when I checked in at the front desk, the
office attendant declared to her co-­workers, “Downtown is here.” In my role as
test-­giver, I was considered to be a part of downtown, a physical manifestation
of its metaphorical reach.
The central (downtown) administrative office oversees all ESOL/bilingual
programs, its administrators responsible for acquiring and distributing federal
money for language education and for developing language policies and pro-
grams for the whole district. Accompanying downtown administration are
regional administrators, representing the nine regions within the district. In my
analysis here, the focus is on two downtown administrators in charge of bilin-
gual education (Emily Dixon-­Marquez and Lucía Sanchez), one bilingual edu-
cation consultant (Eve Island), and one regional administrator (Elizabeth Chain).

Downtown: Promoting Flexibility and Agency in Policy Texts

and Discourses
Elsewhere, I write about a community of educators in the SDP ( Johnson,
2010a) who fostered an ideological space that championed additive (as opposed
to transitional) bilingual education and who developed a dual language initiative
designed to implement dual language education throughout the district. Collab-
oratively, and from the ground, they engendered the SDP Language Policy,
which (in early drafts at least) promoted additive bilingual education over transi-
tional and English-­focused programs. The policy captured the ideological zeit-
geist and discursive space that reigned during the first half of my ethnographic
research (roughly 2002–2004), emphasizing educator agency in the appropria-
tion of top-­down policies, which were treated as flexible and adaptable to the
needs of the teachers. This would change, as would SDP language policy, a
124   D. C. Johnson

change engendered by a shift in administrative personnel, but, at the time, the

energy fostered within and by this group carried over to the BAP, in part
because many of the same people were involved in both projects, including two
important leaders, Eve Island and Emily Dixon-­Marquez.
The Bilingual Articulation Project was spearheaded by a North Region
Superintendent, Elizabeth Chain, with the support of the downtown ESOL/
bilingual office. Four BAP meetings took place between January 24, 2004 and
April 5, 2005. I attended each meeting and was appointed scribe, meaning that
I took notes on what happened, recorded sections of the meetings, and dissemi-
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nated my notes to interested parties, mainly administrators. Bringing two LPP

layers together, the BAP provided a unique context for downtown administra-
tors and teachers to negotiate policy in a face-­to-face setting. The intensifying
focus on the accountability requirements in NCLB during this period of time
coincided with a change in downtown administration that occurred in the
middle of the project, which in turn engendered a change in policy discourse
and text.
The primary purpose of BAP meetings was to align the bilingual programs of
three elementary feeder schools, one middle school, and one high school, such
that the bilingual curriculum would remain consistent and the students would
remain accounted for throughout their K–12 education. Chain recruited the
participants in a December 12, 2003 email in which she explained the purpose
of the meetings:

Chain:  Our goal in the North Region is to create an essential programmatic

structure within each school and further, to ensure that the structures are
coordinated vertically K thru 12. Within the programmatic structure in
each school and among the 5 schools, students should become as proficient
in Spanish and English as possible . . . [T]he school-­based experts (teachers,
administrators) will engineer the program within each school and among
the schools.

In her email, Chain emphasized that the “school-­based experts” (which did not
include Chain, since she did not work in a school) were the “engineers”
responsible for developing the BAP programs in their schools, essentially sculpt-
ing bilingual policy for the region. Nevertheless, because the project was con-
ceived by Chain and downtown administrators, the use of “our” in “our goal in
the North Region” did not include the teachers.
The first meeting on January 24, 2004 and the second on March 20, 2004
were facilitated by Chain and Island, who developed the agendas and ran the
meetings. Island was a consultant on language education for the SDP and a
leader in developing dual language programs and the SDP language policy; now
she was tapped to lead the BAP meetings. As the North Region Superintend-
ent, Chain told me that she saw herself in an ideal position between the teachers
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   125

and downtown to negotiate bilingual education policy: She was once a teacher,
identified with teachers, and valued their expertise. Wanting to motivate teach-
ers to include themselves in the bilingual education policy process, Chain set
the tone for the BAP at the beginning of the first meeting (held in a North
Region high school classroom) by saying, “What we want to do is to build on
your expertise and get a program that we can own” (January 24, 2004). As in
her email, Chain emphasized that the BAP would be a teacher-­generated
project, based on already existing expertise, and she expressed her hope that the
teacher-­experts would “own” the program.
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At the first meeting, Island gave a presentation on the relative effectiveness of

language education programs and reviewed the research on bilingual education
effectiveness. Citing the Collier and Thomas (1997) studies, she emphasized in
her handout that “ELLs in transitional bilingual programs do not generally reach
parity with English speaking counterparts,” reflecting her preference for additive
(or “developmental,” in SDP parlance) over transitional programs. Island’s talk
was followed by breakout group sessions and teacher presentations on the lan-
guage education programs in each of their schools, covering the strengths,
weaknesses, and needs of their respective programs. Much of the time in the
meeting was spent on the presentations, with teachers controlling the direction
and scope of the interaction. This participation framework empowered the
teachers to direct the interaction toward their own interests and, in the process,
take an active role in language policy development.
The second meeting continued in the spirit of the first. Again on a Saturday
morning, the meeting was held in the library of a North Region elementary
school, with food and coffee provided. Like other meetings I attended in the
SDP, it started late, owing to socializing and heavy use of what Goffman calls
ritual brackets: “greetings and farewells, these establishing and terminating open,
official, joint engagement, that is, ratified participation in a social encounter”
(1979, p. 7). Island then started the meeting with another presentation, this time
focusing on federal policy mandates and their influence on bilingual education
practice in the SDP. Drawing from her own research on language planning,
Island emphasized the multi-­layered nature of language policy by presenting an
illustration of concentric circles beginning with “schools” in the middle and
expanding out to region, SDP, state, and federal levels, and the agentive role
that teachers play in language policy processes. It is notable that Island used con-
centric circles rather than lines or boxes depicting levels, and placed teachers in
the center as opposed to the bottom, thus emphasizing their power, or perhaps
their primacy of importance. In response to this presentation, a teacher from
Orlando Cepeda Middle School expressed appreciation that downtown had
involved teachers with the language policy process and specifically used the
word “empowering.”
Both Island and Emily Dixon-­Marquez (then head of ESOL/bilingual edu-
cation in the downtown office) emphasized the flexibility in NCLB and the
126   D. C. Johnson

benefits of the accountability requirements. Island said, “What’s nice about

accountability requirements is that people are paying attention to students who
they weren’t paying attention to before” (March 20, 2004), and later, Dixon-­
Marquez averred, “You’ve got accountability pressure . . . a lot of pressure and
some of it good pressure where it needs to go” (March 20, 2004). Island’s and
Dixon-­Marquez’s assertions about the benefits of ELL accountability reflected
the ideological view created during the beginning of the BAP (and promoted
by downtown administrators) that the accountability requirements in NCLB
focused attention on ELLs, thereby forcing schools to prioritize ELL instruction,
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which in turn brought bilingual/ESOL teachers and administrators out of the

marginalized fringes and into the educational mainstream. This interpretation of
NCLB was similar to Congressman Reyes’.
In the first half of the BAP project, the discursive practices at the meetings
relied on non-­traditional participation frameworks for interaction between
school district administrators and teachers. Resisting the typical hierarchy associ-
ated with such interaction, the interactive meetings relied on group work,
break­out sessions, and teacher-­led presentations, with the teachers often taking
the lead. Further, the teachers were positioned as “experts,” as “engineers,” and
as active agents, who, along with the administrators, would formulate the lan-
guage policy and programs for their schools. Although Island, Chain, and
Dixon-­Marquez wielded disproportionate power as language policy arbiters,
they attempted to empower the teachers by encouraging a relatively egalitarian
discourse community. This was possible, in part, because these three administra-
tors positioned the research and federal language policy as flexible and adaptable.
Thus, two important ideas helped shape the discourse: teacher-­as-policymaker
and policy-­as-flexible. These administrators resisted dominant macro-­discourses
that (1) position macro-­level policy texts and agents as the primary arbiters of
language policy processes and teachers as the implementers of top-­down direc-
tives, and (2) depict transitional or English-­focused programs as superior to
maintenance bilingual education.

Downtown: Promoting Accountability and Structure in Policy

Texts and Discourses
During the 2003–2004 school year, the entire central district administration
began to be reconfigured; Island left her position as consultant and Dixon-­
Marquez left her position in the downtown ESOL/bilingual education office.
Lucía Sanchez, a former Pennsylvania Department of Education administrator
hired to be the new director of ESOL/bilingual education, took the lead in the
BAP. Both Island and Dixon-­Marquez stopped attending the meetings,
although Island sent a number of emails to Sanchez summarizing what had been
done in the BAP and, in effect, ceding control of the project. For example,
Island wrote, “We emphasized that [the teachers] have flexibility in how they
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   127

allocate languages for instructional purposes. . . . We talked about the type of

bilingual program that is emerging in the North Region” (March 20, 2004). In
her final attempt to invest the BAP teachers with language policy power, Island
emphasized flexibility in language policies, making an intertextual connection
to NCLB, and she used the word “emerging” here and throughout the email to
describe how North Region bilingual language policy was being developed
around, and based on, teachers’ needs and expertise.
However, Sanchez’s ideas about teachers’ needs, bilingual education, and
Title III of NCLB were much different from Island’s. In an interview, she
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reflected on the purposes of Title III and bilingual education:

Sanchez:  Title III was created to improve English language acquisition

programs by increasing the services or creating situations where the students
would be getting supplemental services to move them into English language
acquisition situations . . . the target of bilingual programs is not actually to
teach Spanish, the target of the bilingual program is to use your Spanish,
which is the language that you bring to the table, to build your skills in
content area and at the same time offer you the opportunity to acquire
English through a very, you know, targeted instruction in ESOL.
( June 13, 2005)

This interview excerpt reveals two important interpretations that would eventu-
ally have a dramatic impact on language policy: (1) Sanchez interpreted Title III
as restrictively English focused (“Title III was created to improve English lan-
guage acquisition”); and (2) she saw bilingual education as, by definition, transi-
tional. The purpose is “not actually to teach Spanish,” but to use Spanish to
acquire English.
Before the third BAP meeting, Chain explained to me that Sanchez would
be setting the agenda. The project then took on a very different form, with the
meetings led by Sanchez, who used a lecture-­style format. The third meeting
was an introduction to an emerging shift in bilingual education policy and the
new top-­down style of policy enforcement. This shift could be found in the
pages of the newly updated ESOL/Bilingual Education Handbook, developed
exclusively by downtown administrators. The Handbook quickly became the
official language policy, while the original official language policy, the SDP
Language Policy, remained on the ESOL/bilingual office website as a forgotten
remnant of a bygone era.
A comparison of these two language policy documents reveals some import-
ant differences. Ratified in August 2004, the SDP Language Policy defined a
bilingual education program as follows: “A bilingual education program devel-
ops and maintains first language literacy as well as literacy in the second lan-
guage” (Section III, Part 2b). Although this definition of bilingual education
portrays it as additive – that is, it seeks to develop and maintain both the first
128   D. C. Johnson

and second languages – the Handbook did not list native language maintenance
as a goal of a bilingual program. Instead, according to the Handbook, “Bilingual
programs use the native language of the student to develop literacy and the
expectation is that the literacy skills in the student’s native language will transfer
to English.” The Handbook, a downtown policy document for which Sanchez
was largely responsible, became the defining language policy, thereby obfuscat-
ing the “official” SDP language policy that had been generated by teachers and
administrators across various levels of institutional authority. The Handbook
defined bilingual education in a fundamentally different way: as an educational
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program designed to transfer students into English.

While the BAP had once been a teacher-­generated project, it now became a
seminar on how to structure bilingual education according to the Handbook.
Accompanying these policy shifts was a new problem orientation, illuminated in
the opening comments made by Chain at the beginning of the third meeting:
“While there are jewels [bilingual schools] in the North Region, largely there are
problems. . . . Our goal this year is to take where each school is and move toward
the regulations that are outlined in our handbook” (December 14, 2004). Instead
of emphasizing teacher expertise and the bottom-­up nature of the BAP, as she did
in her initial emails and the first meeting, Chain began the third meeting by
focusing on “problems” in the schools and the need to adapt bilingual instruction
to the “regulations” in the Handbook. As in her earlier email, Chain used “our”
(“our goal”) to ostensibly refer to herself and other downtown administrators (i.e.,
Sanchez); however, the goal that Chain described was shaped exclusively by
Sanchez. In other words, administrators were no longer relying on school-­based
experts (i.e., teachers) to help form the goals for the project, but instead on the
regulations Sanchez had outlined in the Handbook.
As the third BAP meeting progressed, the shift in SDP language policy
toward transitional bilingual education (and away from additive programs, like
the one in place at Orlando Cepeda Middle School) became clear; for the
Cepeda teachers, who had a clearly articulated philosophy against transitional
programs, this was jarring. The rift between Sanchez and the Cepeda teachers
was aggravated when, beginning her talk on language education in the SDP,
Sanchez referred to the group of teachers gathered at the meeting as Incas and
Mayans: “We need to take a look at all the different cultures . . . we are all
Latinos – Incas, Mayans . . . we have their spirit, we have their hair” (December
14, 2004). Here, Sanchez committed a social faux pas by using “we” in an
attempt to evoke a shared social identity. Sanchez, who was from Peru, made
an incorrect assumption about the addressees’ cultural membership; the vast
majority of Latinos in the North Region are Puerto Rican, whose ancestors are
Taínos, not Incas or Mayans. This comment irritated the Cepeda teachers who
were Puerto Rican and European Americans.
The meeting itself was dominated by a Sanchez-­led presentation on the poor
test scores in the bilingual programs and, therefore, the need to shift instruction
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   129

toward a different model. This marked the end of the two discourses of teacher-
­as-policymaker and policy-­as-flexible; instead, the new participation framework
was characterized by Sanchez-­led presentations on policy “regulations” at both
the federal and local level. The end of the third meeting also marked the end of
the involvement of the Orlando Cepeda Middle School teachers. Throughout
the third meeting, there was discernible grumbling among the group of teachers
from Cepeda, which came to a head when they confronted Sanchez about what
they perceived to be a “hijacking” of the BAP agenda. They were especially
angry because they were being asked to transition students out of their bilingual
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program, even though this conflicted with their educational philosophy. These
teachers subsequently quit attending (“boycotted,” as they described it) the BAP
meetings. They explained that the goal of the meeting had moved from articu-
lation and program alignment to a class taught by Sanchez about how to do
bilingual education. Further, the new transitional policy conflicted both with
their educational philosophy and with current educational policy, since they
taught in what they described as a one-­way developmental bilingual program,
the goal of which was additive bilingualism.
If the third meeting was an introduction to Sanchez’s style and language edu-
cation philosophy, the fourth meeting (April 9, 2005) provided more clarity.
The meeting took place in the classroom of a North Region elementary school.
Expecting the trend of a light breakfast and a late start to continue, because of
the social niceties and lengthy ritual bracketing that occurred at the first two
meetings, I entered the classroom about ten minutes late on a Saturday morning.
However, there was no food or coffee and the meeting had started on time.
Stationed at the front of the class, Sanchez gave a presentation, which largely
revolved around a series of overhead projector slides on what she entitled the
“Dual Language Umbrella,” under which she presented four program models:
(1) Bilingual Programs, (2) Two-­Way Immersion Programs, (3) Heritage Lan-
guage Programs, and (4) Foreign Language Immersion Programs. Beginning
with what she called “Bilingual Programs,” Sanchez listed early-­exit and late-­
exit transitional as the two models that fall under this category. About the late-­
exit model, which she also referred to as “developmental” and “one-­way
bilingual,” Sanchez declared, “This is how we are going to rearrange our pro-
grams for the whole district. . . . This is a model that guarantees that your chil-
dren will develop literacy in both languages” (April 9, 2005). Here, the use of
pronouns obfuscates who is performing which language policy actions. While
Sanchez used “we” (“This is how we are going to rearrange our programs”),
the reality was that she alone would rearrange the programs. Her pronoun use
gave the impression that decisions about language policy changes were made
collaboratively, when in fact they were made exclusively by Sanchez. Such
statements acted as declarative speech acts (Searle, 1976) in language policy
because they had an immediate and irrevocable impact on the educational
reality for the participants.
130   D. C. Johnson

Further, Sanchez’s definitions and categorizations of bilingual education

models conflicted with previous definitions in the BAP specifically, and the
SDP in general. First, calling the project a “dual language umbrella” implied
that all of these educational models are types of “dual language education,” a
definition that conflicted with use of the term in the SDP (and the field in
general), where the term meant two-­way immersion. Second, she described
“late-­exit transitional” as “developmental”; however, transitional programs had
previously been contrasted with developmental programs by Island, Dixon-­
Marquez, and BAP teachers. Thus, Sanchez appropriated the “developmental”
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and “dual language” descriptors, making reference to programs with which the
BAP teachers were comfortable, to describe educational models that were
neither developmental nor dual language.
Sanchez’s redefinition of bilingual education policy and practice was accom-
panied by her new interpretation and appropriation of NCLB. In the first two
BAP meetings, the accountability requirements were portrayed as beneficial, but
Sanchez, interpreting NCLB as restrictive, used the third BAP meeting to prob-
lematize ELL test scores. For example, at the beginning of the meeting she
declared:

We are going to be focusing on D-­A-T-­A [spelled out] . . . in God we

trust, all others bring data . . . we are a society that really believes in
numbers . . . if you are not part of that picture, the funding will not come
to you – you will be a nobody.
(December 14, 2004)

The pronoun “we” is used exclusively here, with access to the group depend-
ent on at least two conditions: a focus on data and a belief in numbers. (A
belief in God may also have been a condition, though I treat it here as a failed
attempt at humor and not crucial to my analysis.) Sanchez did not appear to
assume that the receivers of her message were already members of this exclu-
sive group, but she suggested that they needed to be or else they would “be a
nobody.” In this way, Sanchez set boundaries on what were appropriate
beliefs for the teachers. In addition, she introduced two new arbiters of lan-
guage policy: numbers/data and society. Sanchez’s argument relied on a series
of generalizations (specifically, the logical fallacy of sweeping generalization):
First, she conflated data with numbers, ignoring non-­numerical data that
could (if allowed) help guide language policy decisions. Second, she claimed
that everyone in “our society” believes in numbers, thereby implicitly legiti-
mizing a positivistic epistemology while delegitimizing other ways of
knowing, including teachers’ experiences in their classrooms. Finally, by
declaring that a teacher (“you”) who does not adhere to these beliefs will be
“a nobody,” she positioned the teachers as subservient participants in the poli-
cymaking process.
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   131

Transitioning to English
After the BAP, Sanchez began her visits to the bilingual schools to enact the
new language policy, which focused on transitional and English-­oriented pro-
grams. Her first meeting with bilingual education teachers took place in a school
with an active additive program. Sanchez had just explained that the policy
within the district was in the process of shifting away from developmental and
additive models to transitional and English-­focused models. Even though she
did not specifically refer to the new programs as “transitional,” she met with
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resistance from a bilingual education teacher:

Teacher:  Who or where did the decision make . . . come from to [transition
students]?
Sanchez:  Because, because, number 1, we looked at all the programs that are
effective based on Krashen’s research . . . and the beginning of Title III of
the No Child Left Behind Act, which is long, and there’s nothing we can
do to change that.

And, later in the meeting, while defending her decisions:

Sanchez:  Everyone knows about Stephen Krashen – he’s a linguist that has
devoted most of his research to education, but he’s a linguist. He’s a scientist
that studies different linguistic patterns but he really – we heard about the
silent period through Krashen, we heard about comprehensible input, that’s
Krashen. We heard about the lowering the affective filter, that’s Krashen,
error correction, that’s Krashen, so all of that is good research that we all as
language teachers need to know. And he said, he is the expert, and he said
that, yes, you can introduce English right away – Yes, it is important that
we know what the research says.
( January 12, 2005)

Sanchez defined Title III of NCLB as inflexibly focused on English and she
defended this interpretation (an interpretation that would have been rejected by
earlier administrators) by (mis)appropriating Krashen’s research. She portrayed both
federal language policy and research as setting rigid standards to which language
policy and pedagogy in the SDP must adapt. Although Sanchez’s choice of pro-
nouns appears to suggest that the policy decisions were made collaboratively (“we
looked at all the programs,” “we heard about the silent period through Krashen”),
she simultaneously marginalized the teachers in the room (“there’s nothing we can
do to change that”). Despite pronoun usage that suggests inclusivity, the teachers
played no role in making these decisions; Sanchez alone was responsible.
Sanchez’s use of “we” in “there’s nothing we can do to change that” and “it
is important that we know what the research says” misleadingly suggested that
132   D. C. Johnson

she and the teachers were identified; yet these statements served the purpose of
positioning herself as more powerful than teachers: Sanchez actually did have
the power to change policy for the SDP, and she suggested that she knew what
the research says. The implication is that it is the teachers (“you”) who need to
learn about research. Thus, Sanchez implied that the decision to shift to transi-
tional bilingual education and English-­focused models had been made collec-
tively, while simultaneously (and contradictorily) she argued that she and the
teachers were powerless in making language policy decisions. Sanchez suggested
that the real power lay with Title III and Krashen. By emphasizing Krashen’s
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status as an expert, a scientist, and a linguist, she disqualified the teachers from
making language policy decisions and stripped them of their language policy
agency. (In addition, her summary of Krashen’s research was highly misleading
[see Krashen, 1996].)
By conferring language policy decisions on Krashen and Title III, and claim-
ing that both dictate transitional bilingual language policy, Sanchez deflected
responsibility for policymaking and positioned herself as a messenger. Neverthe-
less, Sanchez exercised a great deal of agentive power. Wodak and Fairclough
(2010) describe this essentially misleading discursive strategy as a fallacy, because
it shifts blame to outside and abstract entities, thus allowing for positive self-­
representation. Sanchez gave the impression that she was aligned with the teach-
ers, while concomitantly disregarding their wishes and taking exclusive control
of language policy decisions.

Discussion and Conclusion

This chapter argues that a tension between accountability and flexibility surfaced
in policy text and discourse. The discourse of NCLB was marked by a shift
away from additive bilingual education and toward transitional and English-­
focused programs. In addition, a vigorous focus on standardized tests has under-
mined bilingual programs in the United States. Yet the language of both official
(NCLB) and unofficial policy texts (e.g., the US Department of Education
website, assertions by DOE administrators, and the language and actions of
members of the Bush administration) does not restrict any particular educational
program. Indeed, these texts stress the flexibility of the policy with regard to
language education programs. Therefore, while there was a shift at the federal
level, this shift was not necessarily ideologically consistent or homogeneous, and
was instead characterized by heterogeneity in policy text and discourse, which
educators must interpret and appropriate for themselves. Educators in the SDP
interpreted the policy texts and discourses in varied ways. Their appropriation
of these texts relied on macro-­policy texts and discourses and on the ideologies,
discourses, and relationships of power unique to this context. Some agents,
including Eve Island and Emily Dixon-­Marquez, portrayed NCLB as flexible
and its accountability requirements as potentially beneficial for ELLs. Others,
Positioning the Language Policy Arbiter   133

like Lucía Sanchez, portrayed NCLB as restrictively focused on English educa-

tion and emphasized its lack of flexibility. While the power of NCLB is undeni­
able, educators like Island and Sanchez opened and closed (respectively) options
for language policy agency in their government of bilingual teachers.
While language policy agents can be selective interpreters of language policy
texts and powerful arbiters in the policy process, this chapter also reveals how
agency can be stripped within shifting discursive practices and participation
frameworks. In the first half of data collection, the teachers in this study were
celebrated as experts and partners in the design of their bilingual programs.
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Island and Dixon-­Marquez highlighted flexibility in language policy, emphas-

ized agency in language policy development and appropriation, and encouraged
teachers to engage in policymaking as active agents. However, after a change in
administration and the emergence of a new language policy arbiter (Lucía
Sanchez), the teachers were positioned as mere implementers or receivers of
top-­down directives. Sanchez marginalized the teachers in meetings by posi-
tioning them as non-­experts, non-­linguists, and therefore non-­agents. These
changes were facilitated by a shift in the participation framework to a traditional
hierarchical structure in which Sanchez controlled interactions and made
decisions. Sanchez’s beliefs about language education and policy and her inter-
pretation of NCLB set limits on what was educationally possible, as Sanchez
herself acted as an arbiter of dominant discourses that marginalize minority-­
language use in schools. In Foucault’s words (1982), Sanchez was “behaving as
she should,” by practicing a form of self-­governance aligned with dominant dis-
courses about language education and policy; through Sanchez’s government of
the bilingual teachers, marginalizing ideologies about language and language
education were instantiated as educational realities.
To justify seizing control from the teachers, Sanchez portrayed national lan-
guage policy (i.e., Title III) and “the data” as monolithic and inflexibly focused
on transitional bilingual education and English-­focused language education.
However, although she portrayed herself as powerless, Sanchez was the most
important language policy arbiter, interpreting and appropriating both the
research and federal language policy as she saw fit. She was able to gain control
of policymaking from the bilingual teachers because of her position as an
administrator and because she successfully positioned the teachers as mere
implementers of language policy.
This chapter proposes that an approach to language policy that combines
critical language policy with ethnographic methods strikes the necessary balance
between structure and agency in language policy and can help make connec-
tions between local policies and practices and the various layers of policy text
and discourse. It is not just policy documents or state institutions but also policy
agents that set boundaries on what is educationally possible. Empirical data must
be collected to enhance our understanding of how explicit policies, state institu-
tions, and policy agents interact.
134   D. C. Johnson

These findings have implications for language policy engagement. Local edu-
cators, and especially school district administrators, play a powerful role in inter-
preting and appropriating macro-­level policy texts and discourses. They are not
simply policy implementers or “servants of the system . . . that follow orders
unquestioningly” (Shohamy, 2006, p. 76); they are active agents in the language
policy process. When there was a shift in the School District of Philadelphia
toward transitional and English-­focused programs, this shift relied as much on
the beliefs and practices of language policy agents as the requirements of No
Child Left Behind. Throughout the institutional levels of the SDP, there was a
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diversity of beliefs and practices, and it is the nature of this diversity that needs
to be better understood for language policy theory and practice. Because lan-
guage policy scholars can and do play an active role in language policy pro­
cesses, they can work to promote the interests of minority languages and
minority language speakers. Bridging the gap between K–12 teachers and the
academy can lead to a better understanding of language policy processes and a
more hopeful future for marginalized languages and their users.

NOTE
1 Although the real name of the school district is used, all other names of people, offices,
and policies within the school district are pseudonyms.

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PART III

Indigenous Languages in
Postcolonial Education
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Part III includes two chapters that examine the following critical issues: How are
language policies and programs affected by global processes such as colonialism,
decolonization, and the spread of English? Chapter 7, by Alamin Mazrui, exam-
ines the historical development of language policies in Kenya, culminating in
the recently adopted new Constitution, which makes Kiswahili co-­equal with
English as the country’s official languages. Although Kenya still has much work
to do in order to fully spell out the implications of the new constitutional order,
it is likely that the new status of Kiswahili will have important implications for
language policies in schools, including the possibility for a new regimen of
bilingualism and bilingual education.
In Chapter 8, Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu examines language policies in
education in two (largely) monolingual states, Lesotho and Swaziland. Kamwan-
gamalu is particularly interested in the factors that constrain efforts to develop
bilingual policies to support the official indigenous languages, seSotho in
Lesotho and siSwati in Swaziland. His analysis suggests that the factors limiting
the use of seSotho and siSwati are the same obstacles as those in multilingual
states – an analysis with important implications for the promotion of indigenous
languages in Africa and other regions as well.
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7
LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION IN
KENYA

Between the Colonial Legacy and the New

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Constitutional Order

Alamin Mazrui

In August 2010, citizens of Kenya voted for a new constitutional order in a ref-
erendum that, for many, heralds a new beginning in important domains of
national life. Arguably among the most revolutionary of the provisions of the
new Constitution is the elevation of Kiswahili to a co-­equal status with English
as the country’s official languages. The Kenyan government is now in the
process of drafting the Official Languages Bill, which, once ready and enacted
in Parliament, will articulate in greater detail the nature of this co-­official rela-
tionship. What, then, are the implications of Kiswahili’s new national status in
the education of Kenyan children? This chapter seeks to explore the educational
policies that have framed English and Kiswahili over the years, from the colonial
period to the postcolonial phase associated with the new Constitution.
As in much of the rest of Africa, Kenya’s ethnic diversity is reflected in its
linguistic landscape. The country has over 45 local languages, which are prima-
rily known to and used by members of the respective ethnic groups. Some of
these, like Gikuyu and Dholuo, are home languages to rapidly growing popula-
tions of speakers that are estimated to number in the millions. Others, like Suba
and Okiek, have numerically small and declining numbers of speakers, with the
languages being in danger of extinction. In addition, Kenya has been fortunate
to have two trans-­ethnic media of communication, one local (Kiswahili) and
the other imperial (English), which have experienced changing fortunes since
the days of British colonial rule. An imperial language is defined as one that has
acquired a dominant role in a given society as a direct result of conquest or col-
onization by another power, without being the mother tongue of those who
were conquered or colonized. It is in this sense that English can be considered
an imperial language in Kenya. But precisely because it lacks a local ethnic
­constituency, it has sometimes been seen as a neutral medium of inter-­ethnic
140   A. Mazrui

communication. On the other hand, though Kiswahili is local in origin, only a

very tiny population of Kenyans speak it as a home language. As a result,
because it is not regarded as posing any potential danger of ethnic hegemony, it
could more easily acquire national status and popular support.
Over the decades, colonial and postcolonial educational policies placed the
two languages, English and Kiswahili, in competition with each other at some
times, and in complementary spaces at other times. Will the new language legis-
lation now affect the contours of this relationship? Following a historical
account of language policy in Kenya, the chapter will conclude by examining
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the significance of Kiswahili’s new, constitutionally mandated status as an offi-

cial language in Kenya and the prospects offered by the new Constitution for a
significant policy shift that would enhance the role of the language in educa-
tional instruction.

Language Policy before World War II

Kenya is among the African countries which, after the Berlin conference of
1884–1885, came under British colonial rule. This lasted until the early 1960s,
when (in 1963) Kenya attained its independence. Though this African encoun-
ter with colonialism lasted for less than a century, its impact in certain cultural
spheres, such as language and religion, was profound and seemingly permanent.
Indeed, the English language today is perhaps one of the most enduring legacies
of Kenya’s experience with British colonialism.
This consolidation of English in Kenya has its origins in colonial language
policies that were often informed by a combination of ideological and pragmatic
considerations. Imperial powers differed significantly in their cultural attitudes
on the issue of language. At one extreme had been the Germans, who once
believed that no African was good enough to speak the German language.
German policy sought to maintain the cultural distance between Africans and
their rulers, and between German culture and African culture. At the other
extreme had been the French, who denied legitimacy to native culture and per-
mitted cultural co-­optation through French assimilation.
Somewhere between German policies of cultural distance and French pol-
icies of cultural assimilation lay the unique, if untidy, British variation. The
British agreed that no African was good enough to become English, but thought
there was some virtue in being minimally Anglicized. As with German colonial
rule before the end of World War I, the British encouraged the learning of
some African languages, though British motives were different from German
ones.
The British respected African cultures and languages to a greater extent than
did either the German or the French, although all three European imperial
nations regarded African cultures and languages as inferior to those of Europe.
The British committed greater time and resources to the codification and
Language and Education in Kenya   141

p­ romotion of such languages as Kiswahili. Publications appeared in those lan-

guages under British rule, and indigenous languages generally had a place in the
curriculum of colonial schools, if only as media of instruction in the lower
primary classes.
The paternalistic linguistic ideology of the British was in conformity with the
notion of the “dual mandate” as conceived by Lord Lugard, perhaps the most
influential British administrator in colonial Africa. The dual mandate advocated,
in part, that the British had a duty to facilitate the “civilization” and “moderni-
zation” of Africans, while supposedly safeguarding the integrity of their cultures
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and identities. In the linguistic arena, this meant providing access to the English
language in a regulated manner that would not risk colonial political stability or
threaten the survival and use of local languages.
The linguistic dimension of the dual mandate came to find its most explicit
expression in the 1925 report of the Phelps-­Stokes Commission. The report
argued that while “natives” should not be denied the opportunity to acquire the
English language, they have an inherent and inalienable right to their mother
tongues (Jones, 1925). In fact, this is the linguistic philosophy that held sway in
many British colonies until the end of World War II.
Until 1945, therefore, the situation in Kenya was one in which English and
local African languages maintained a certain degree of complementarity in offi-
cial institutions of the state. If the English language dominated the higher levels
of colonial administration, the African languages prevailed in the lower adminis-
trative levels. As a result, demonstrated knowledge of African languages often
became one of the requirements for job appointment and promotion for British
colonial officers seeking to work in Kenya. Again, English was the only official
language of the higher courts; but the lower and “native” courts were almost
exclusively the preserve of local languages. If the body that made the law, the
legislative council, was the domain of the English language, the institutions
charged with the enforcement of the law, like the police, the prisons, and the
army, were heavily dependent on the local lingua franca, Kiswahili.
The most extensive discussions about British colonial language policies prob-
ably centered on the place of language in education. Here, too, the linguistic
implications of Lugard’s ideology of the dual mandate came to prevail. In
Kenya, a 1949 report of the Department of Education noted that the language
of early primary education was to be the “vernacular,” but that from Grade 4
onward, Kiswahili should be the medium of instruction. English, on the other
hand, was to be introduced as a subject at this stage and to assume the role of an
instructional medium only at secondary school level (Gorman, 1974a). Though
this policy was not effectively and consistently implemented throughout the
country, it had its strong advocates from within the colonial establishment.
In the period up to the end of World War II, then, African languages
enjoyed a relatively favorable political climate, while English was introduced
with relative caution. Indeed, Lord Lugard himself was of the belief that “the
142   A. Mazrui

premature teaching of English . . . inevitably leads to utter disrespect for British
and native ideals alike and to a denationalized and disorganized population”
(cited by Coleman, 1958, pp. 136–137). As a result, the interwar period turned
out to be the golden age for African language development and promotion by
the colonial administration.
It is also significant that Kenya was deliberately developed as a “white
settler colony.” Paradoxically, the presence of large numbers of European set-
tlers in Kenya initially hurt rather than helped the spread of English among
Africans. In fact, compared to its neighboring countries, African education in
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Kenya was slow to take off. Many European settlers regarded the teaching of
the English language to “natives” as a potentially subversive force. Social dis-
tance between master and subject had to be maintained partly through lin-
guistic distance. Some settler leaders, like Major E. J. Grogan, could not even
imagine “a more desperate happening than introducing English to Africans
whose main vocation should be to work in the fields” (cited by Gorman,
1974a, p.  417). Many European employers insisted on speaking “broken
Swahili” (ki-­Settla, meaning the settlers’ version of the language) to their
African employees even if the African’s command of English was better than
the European’s command of Kiswahili. It is safe to say that the presence of a
significant English-­speaking white population in Kenya from the 1920s to the
1940s was often more a liability than an asset to the spread of the English lan-
guage among Africans in the country. In addition, the colonial administration
in Kenya experienced significant opposition from the British settlers to its
modest program to expose Africans to some English.
In subsequent years, of course, the proximity of a sizable white population
began to help the fortunes of the English language in the larger society. After
World War II, African education in Kenya became less and less subject to settler
lobbying within the country and more subject to the wider imperial policies of
Britain. The capacity of the white settlers to inhibit the spread of English among
Africans declined. On the other hand, their presence as a major English-­
speaking economic force in the country began at last to have a favorable impact
on the spread of English.

Language Policy after World War II

In the period after World War II, a slight shift in British colonial language and
education policy began to take place. The first victim of this postwar mood was
Kiswahili, hitherto recognized officially as the inter-­territorial lingua franca of
East Africa. It was at this juncture that the colonial Advisory Council on African
Education in Kenya adopted the recommendation of the Beecher Report on the
teaching of languages in African schools that “more emphasis should be placed
on the teaching of vernacular languages, and that English should take the place of
[ki]Swahili as the colony’s lingua franca in as short a time as practicable” (cited
Language and Education in Kenya   143

by Gorman, 1974a, p. 427). This led to the gradual replacement of Kiswahili by

English as the medium of instruction in the educational system.
These efforts to eliminate Kiswahili as a significant language in the educa-
tional process, and the introduction of English at earlier stages in primary
school, were explained in terms of Kiswahili’s adverse effects on the learning of
both English and the “vernacular” (Marshad, 1984, p.  37). Yet because these
efforts were most intense in the postwar period, when there was growing resist-
ance to British colonial rule, Kabwegyere has suggested that the move was
intended to minimize intra-­African contact among “the masses” as a way of
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weakening the nationalist struggle against colonialism (1974, pp. 218–219).

As the nationalist resistance kept growing, however, and independence from
colonial rule appeared imminent, the British became concerned about creating a
new elite, both economically through land redistribution and culturally through
the educational process. In the cultural domain, the Drogheda Report recom-
mended that the first essential step in the creation of a Westernized elite was to
increase knowledge of the English language (Marshad, 1984). Subsequent to
this, the British Information Service apparently intensified its political and prop-
aganda efforts in the area of language aimed specifically at this emergent elite
(Whitely, 1971). Against this political backdrop, then, efforts to consolidate the
position of English kept mounting, and by 1953 it had been made a compulsory
subject in the national examination in the final year of primary education, and
the main subject of the curriculum in African intermediate schools in Kenya
(Gorman, 1974a).
The presumed shortage of instructional materials in local languages was
repeatedly invoked as an additional argument in favor of English as a teaching
medium in even earlier grades. Indeed, the only factor that seemed to deter the
colonial educational authorities from proceeding any faster in the establishment
of English education was the lack of sufficient teachers of the language. It was
often feared that introducing English “too rapidly” without the availability of
enough competent teachers could only lead to the acquisition of a bad smatter-
ing of the language, which the British found objectionable (Marshad, 1984).
Ironically, interest by the British in spreading their language in East Africa
found tremendous support in African nationalist demands for “more English.”
The colonial education office found itself pressured by African nationalists to
move faster than it was prepared to do in the introduction of English in schools
(Gorman, 1974a). In an essay on English and the origins of African nationalism,
Mazrui (1975) argued that the English language in Africa facilitated the devel-
opment of certain notions of self-­determination and the growth of anti-­
colonialism in Africa itself. Some of these notions expressed themselves in terms
of equality of rights, freedoms, and opportunities. English had become the lan-
guage of white-­collar employment and wider economic opportunities. Nation-
alists thus regarded Africans as underprivileged when Europeans and, to a lesser
extent, Asians were accorded greater access to the language than Africans in the
144   A. Mazrui

racially divided school structure. The nationalist demand for “more English,”
then, was part of the wider demand for equality of opportunity.
Capitalizing on this nationalist mood, the colonial government continued to
push its dual agenda of promoting English and marginalizing Kiswahili in the
educational system. The East African Royal Commission Report of 1955, for
example, regarded “the teaching of Swahili as a second language to children
whose early education has been in other vernaculars as a complete waste of time
and effort” (p. 10). On the other hand, it described English as a gateway into a
new world and the language that the people of East Africa were very keen on
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learning. Therefore, the Commission recommended that the “teaching of

English should begin in as low a class as possible, and should become the
medium of instruction as early as it can be followed by pupils” (cited by
Gorman, 1974a, p. 434).
While efforts were in progress to introduce English as rapidly as possible in
African schools, the new African elite became the target of experimentation with
all-­English medium schools. The objective of creating a highly Anglicized African
elite, therefore, was now under way, paradoxically supported by the nationalist
momentum. The British found in Kenya (away from the coastal region, where
Kiswahili is spoken as a home language) relatively decentralized African com-
munities that were essentially stateless societies. There were no hereditary kings
and princes beyond the Kenyan coast. The first students of the English language
were sons and daughters of ordinary peasants and workers. In Kenya, then, the
acquisition of the language by children of peasants and the semi-­proletariat from
the outset became a significant factor in new elite formation outside the more tra-
ditional social structure. This situation contrasts with that of neighboring Uganda,
where linguistic Anglicization had less effect on restratification than it did in
Kenya. The fact that Uganda already had a highly developed class of traditional
elites who were the first to appropriate the English language as a class symbol
tended to reinforce rather than undermine the preexisting social hierarchy.
In the meantime, there was some concern in British colonial circles that the
switch in instructional medium from the local languages to English was a draw-
back in the learning process as a whole, since this change supposedly took place
when the subject matter itself was becoming more challenging (Curtis, 1965).
Partly in an attempt to investigate this problem, a Special Centre was set up in
Nairobi in 1957 with the express aim of alleviating difficulties arising out of
multilingualism in Asian schools. There were European schools always using
English as an instructional medium; many African schools, with English as a
medium of instruction from Grade 5 onwards; and Asian schools that used
Gujarati, Punjabi, and Hindu/Urdu for the first three years of schooling, with
English taking over from Grade 4. It is this latter population of Asian students
that the Special Centre was initially established to serve. The Special Centre
began its work in 1958 by experimenting with English as the exclusive medium
of instruction from the first grade in select Asian schools in Nairobi.
Language and Education in Kenya   145

These experimentations were hailed as a great success (Gorman, 1974a), and

it was immediately recommended that more schools, both Asian and African,
located in the urban area of Nairobi adopt the English language instructional
model – now advocated under the name of the New Primary Approach (NPA).
After the course was adapted for African schools from about 1961, the program
grew rapidly. In Kenya, for example, the number of English-­medium classes in
public schools at the primary level rose from 14 in 1962 to 290 by 1963
(Gorman, 1974a). In private schools, early English-­medium instruction quickly
became the norm in urban areas, presumably in response to public demand for
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“more English.”
Outside the main cities, the ideal of using local languages as media of instruc-
tion continued to be pursued to one degree or another. But partly because edu-
cation in the local languages was not integrated into the curriculum of teacher
training institutions, and partly because there were no real efforts and invest-
ments in developing appropriate materials, instruction in these languages was
left to the skills, abilities, and resourcefulness of individual teachers. These limi­
tations created conditions in which English increasingly took the place of local
languages as early as the first grade throughout the country. In the urban areas,
English began to be introduced as early as kindergarten and nursery school.

Language Policy after Independence

After Kenya became independent in 1963, the Ministry of Education appointed
a commission under the chairmanship of Professor S. H. Ominde to advise the
government on issues of educational policy and, subsequently, to recommend
reforms that would express the aspirations and cultural values of an independent
African country and contribute to the unity of the nation. On the question of
language policy, in particular, the commission noted that the sentiments and
popular wishes of the great majority of witnesses appearing before the commis-
sion were in favor of retaining English as the medium of instruction from the
first grade of primary school. The commission then proceeded to declare its
support for these sentiments, on the grounds that English would expedite learn-
ing in all subjects, partly by avoiding the difficult transition from the “vernacu-
lars,” and partly because of the language’s own intrinsic resources (Republic of
Kenya, 1964, p. 60).
This report gave further impetus to the national momentum to introduce
English-­medium instruction at an earlier phase than the British themselves had
ever done. The NPA spread rapidly; by 1966, half the primary schools in Kenya
were reportedly being taught in English under the NPA (Republic of Kenya,
1967), and English began to be introduced into the school system as early as
kindergarten in the urban areas of the country.
Witnesses interviewed by the Ominde Commission, however, also expressed
the need to promote Kiswahili in education for purposes of national and
146   A. Mazrui

p­ an-­African unity. Kiswahili thus came to be offered as a compulsory subject in

Kenya’s primary schools, but it was not to become an examinable subject of the
national examination until the 1980s. In particular, Kenya introduced a new
educational structure in 1983 – the so-­called 8-4-4, modeled after the American
school system – in which Kiswahili now became a compulsory and examinable
subject in both primary/elementary education and secondary/higher education.
Since then, every student has had to demonstrate command of both English and
Kiswahili to graduate.
In spite of the new educational policy that has advanced the place of Kiswa-
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hili in society at large, however, English has continued to enjoy tremendous

support from the government in its commitment of human and material
resources. After the release of the Ominde Commission Report, the Kenya and
British governments began to work closely together in English-­based education,
investing major resources to ensure the success of the NPA and other supple-
mentary projects. The period after 1965 in particular

saw a heavy investment in English Language teaching by the governments

of Kenya and the United Kingdom at different levels, including technical
assistance for curriculum development (at Kenya Institute of Education),
pre-­service teacher training (in teachers’ colleges and universities) and a
cadre of OSAS English teachers in secondary schools.
(Republic of Kenya, 1992, p. 4)

The Overseas Development Agency (ODA) of the British government also pro-
vided funds and personnel to set up English communication skills units in the
various universities in Kenya.
Kenya’s language policy put a high premium on English as the language of
national and individual economic and social advancement. As a result, not only
has English dominated the entire educational structure, but its use in society at
large has been expanding as well. There are, first, a growing number of people
whose lives are virtually dominated by the English language in meeting their
communicative needs. Many members of the educated African elite have come
to rely on English in public interactions as well as in their homes, especially
couples of inter-­ethnic unions. Also, an increasing number of Kenyans are
growing up bilingual in English and one or more other languages. Because they
are exposed to the other language only in the home, while they use English
both at home and outside, English gains the upper hand in many functions.
Indeed, as early as 1974 it was observed that there is a gradual shift from local
languages to English in Kenya (Gorman, 1974b), especially among middle- and
upper-­class children in urban areas.
But the spread of English in the society as a whole is by no means limited to
the urban middle and upper classes. Whiteley’s study of English usage in rural
Kenya, for example, is quite informative. The largest number of rural respondents
Language and Education in Kenya   147

who claimed competence in English were trilingual in the mother tongue, Kiswa-
hili as a second language, and English. This group constituted an average of about
32% of his (multi-­ethnic) sample, a figure proportionately higher than the average
percentage (about 19%) for respondents claiming competence in the mother
tongue and Kiswahili alone. On the other hand, those who claimed competence
in English and one or more “vernaculars” without knowledge of Kiswahili con-
stituted less than 6% of the sample (Whiteley, 1974a).
If as far back as 1974 the spread of English was already as extensive in the
rural areas as Whiteley’s figures seem to suggest, then its impact on the urban
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population is likely to be even deeper. Because of the greater concentration in

the city of schools as well as of speakers of English (as a first or additional lan-
guage) and of the greater availability of radio, television, films, magazines, and
other entertainment in English, the urban population generally has greater access
to this language than the rural population. Moreover, the international status of
Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, has enhanced the value of English in the country as a
whole and intensified the quest for its acquisition. Nairobi houses the United
Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the first UN agency to be located
outside the Western world. Nairobi has also been the headquarters of the All-­
Africa Conference of Churches, and a regional capital of a number of inter-­
African and Pan-­African enterprises. It has also become the favorite venue in
sub-­Saharan Africa for world congresses – including the UN Conference on
Women in 1985, major UNESCO meetings, the 2007 World Social Forum, at
least one important World Bank–International Monetary Fund meeting, and
such academic congresses as the World Conference of Philosophy. The inter-
nationalization of Nairobi has favored the fortunes of the English language not
only within the city itself but in the country as a whole.
Yet another windfall for the English language in postcolonial Kenya is the
pro-­Western foreign policy that the Kenyan government decided to follow.
This policy encouraged a constant flow of English-­speaking experts and exper-
tise into Kenya, as well as books and international magazines. The fortunes of
the English language in postcolonial Kenya were also helped by the fact that
Kenya’s rulers remained civilian. Civilian rulers in most of Africa tend to be
better educated and more Westernized than their military counterparts. The
civilians therefore have better command of the imperial language and usually a
vested interest in it. Kenya’s stability under civilian administrations therefore
favored the consolidation of English in the country.
Of course, there have been other developments over the past couple of
decades that have enhanced the value of Kiswahili. As was indicated earlier,
today every pre-­university student in Kenya is required to study Kiswahili and
pass it as a subject in the national examination. This policy has been in opera-
tion for over 20 years, accompanied by a very rich and growing body of Kiswa-
hili publications, especially in literary materials, readers, and Kiswahili textbooks
for schools. Assessing the results of this policy, Kimani Njogu, the chair of
148   A. Mazrui

Kenya’s Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa (National Swahili Council), has had the
following to say:

There is an aura of excitement among Kiswahili scholars because seeds

planted decades ago have flowered and are beginning to bear fruit. The
language is now common in offices, in the streets and homes. It is robust
in the informal sector and has become an engine of economic regenera-
tion. Official business is being transacted in the language and it is no
longer viewed as “low status” to speak it.
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(2006, p. 12)

How closely do Kimani Njogu’s views mirror the reality on the ground? In the
only empirical study since Whiteley’s, Kembo-­Sure (1999) demonstrates that
English is indeed threatening the future of Kiswahili as well as Kenya’s other
languages. In Kembo-­Sure’s study, 71.4% of his 805 (mainly educated) respond-
ents claimed high proficiency in English as opposed to 55% for Kiswahili. Apart
from the marketplace and the Jua Kali (i.e., informal) economic sector, where
Kiswahili is the preferred code, English is predominant in many domains. As
Kembo-­Sure concludes, English

is now gradually expanding its role and functions to include those that
were initially thought to be the natural domains for local languages. It is
being used in the homes between siblings and to a small extent between
children and parents. It is preferred between boys and their girlfriends and
between husbands and wives. It is the language of intimacy and romance.
In the public domain it is used invariably in communication in all public
institutions. . . . It is also preferred in dealings at banks, post office, hospi-
tals, even though in these institutions one has a choice between English
and Kiswahili. This is already a clear indication that “the writing is on the
wall”: English may eventually replace Kiswahili and Mother tongue in all
crucial areas of private and public communication.
(1999, p. 7)

In Kembo-­Sure’s view, then, what began as a second language acquired mainly

for purposes of economic and social mobility is increasingly becoming the
primary language of successive generations of Kenyans.
On the other hand, the strong reaction of Kenyans from all walks of life to a
January 2010 circular from the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC)
demonstrates the extent to which Kiswahili has become a valued educational
subject. The circular claimed, in part, that once the new Constitution came into
effect, students would be expected to make a choice between studying Kiswahili
as a compulsory subject or Kenyan Sign Language (KSL). The circular attracted
widespread condemnation until the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of
Language and Education in Kenya   149

­ ducation, Karega Mutahi, publicly disowned the wording of the circular.

E
According to Mutahi’s clarification, the only students who were allowed the
choice between Kiswahili and KSL were those with a hearing impairment (Daily
Nation, Nairobi, January 20, 2010, p. 16). But the intense national response that
the misunderstanding had generated perhaps goes to support Kimani Njogu in
his statement that Kiswahili has acquired a new momentum in the country.

Education and English Language Proficiency

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In spite of this extensive spread of English to the earliest possible levels of edu-
cation, and the tremendous investments put into its promotion, for many years
there have been numerous claims of “falling standards” of English in the educa-
tional institutions as well as in the society at large. In Kenya, the fear of falling
standards of English has been a recurrent issue in government reports and the
media. A 1993 report of the Kenya National Examination Council, for example,
noted that “the standard of English has been falling while that of Kiswahili has
shown improvement since it was made a compulsory subject in the 8-4-4
system of education.” The report goes on to state that students cannot follow
basic instructions in English and end up giving irrelevant answers in examina-
tions (Daily Nation, Nairobi, August 14, 1993).
But perhaps the most alarming statement on the falling standards of English
in Kenya came from Professor Japheth Kiptoon, then the vice-­chancellor of
Egerton University. Kiptoon claimed that many undergraduate students in
Kenya’s public universities are functionally illiterate in English and could not
even write a simple application for a job in the language. Kiptoon went on to
claim that “a good number of employers have complained that many graduates
cannot communicate effectively in English which is the official medium of
instruction right from primary to university level” (Daily Nation, Nairobi, June
5, 1993). Kiptoon’s revelation triggered a long newspaper debate about the pos-
sible causes of this supposed decline in the standards of the English language.
One recurrent issue in this debate was how the problem of the quality of
English as an instructional medium was leading to poor performance in other
subjects. The impression was thus created that virtually the whole of education
in Kenya was in a state of crisis, and that the only possible way to save the situ-
ation was to invest immensely more resources in raising students’ English profi-
ciency. The Primary Education Strengthening Project and the Secondary
English Language Project, both sponsored by the British government, were
launched partly to redress this academic problem (Daily Nation, Nairobi, June 5,
1993).
Particularly noteworthy in this entire debate was the total absence of voices
even mildly suggesting that the policy of English-­medium instruction from the
earliest years of education deserves another look altogether. The question that
preoccupied the British colonial administration as to which language was more
150   A. Mazrui

suited to learning in early childhood education has not featured at all in the
recurrent Kenyan debates on English as a medium of instruction and its implica-
tions for the acquisition of knowledge in other subjects.
The demand for “more” and “better” English in the educational system in
Kenya expectedly led to the increasing involvement of, dependency on, and
investment by foreign governments and agencies toward this objective. This is
particularly true of the British government through its Overseas Development
Agency and the British Council. Whether or not this external involvement in
the promotion of English is part of a deliberate effort to foster the spread of
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English for the overall economic and political interests of the West, as suggested
by Phillipson (1992), is difficult to determine with certainty. But there is little
doubt that both these British bodies have been particularly active in initiating
and administering a chain of projects intended to strengthen the position of
English in Kenya. The question, then, is whether the new Constitution that
came into effect in 2010, giving Kiswahili a status equal to English as one of the
country’s co-­official languages, is likely to change the fortunes of Kiswahili in
education, specifically, and in the society at large.

Language Policy under the New Constitution

According to Chapter 2, Article 7 of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya: “1) The
national language of the Republic is Kiswahili. 2) The official languages of the
Republic are Kiswahili and English.” The national status of Kiswahili continues
a tradition that was put in force in the country in 1974 under the rule of the
nation’s first president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. Kenyatta’s was probably the earli-
est expression of a political desire to reduce the role of English in Kenya. After
delivering a prepared speech in English to the first parliamentary congregation
of the new republic, Kenyatta concluded by urging the house to free itself from
“linguistic slavery” by adopting Kiswahili as its language of official business
(Republic of Kenya, 1965, Column 8).
In fact, Kenyatta was eager to see Kiswahili serve not only as the language of
Parliament but also as the national language of the country. In this objective, he
had the full backing of the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union (East
African Standard, April 7, 1970). But these sentiments were obviously not shared
by everyone. There was a small but influential group of politicians, led by the
then-­attorney general of the country, Charles Njonjo, who were hostile to the
idea of reducing the role of English in Parliament or in the society at large (see,
for example, Republic of Kenya, 1969, Columns 2517–2525).
After some ten years of recurrent debate in and outside Parliament, however,
the nationalist position of Jomo Kenyatta prevailed. In 1974, Kiswahili was
declared the national language and by 1975, for the first time, English had to
share the parliamentary platform with a local language. Parliamentarians could
now participate in either English or Kiswahili. But even after Kiswahili became
Language and Education in Kenya   151

an additional language of debate in the legislature, the legislation itself came

before Parliament written only in the English language. There was thus the
anomaly that each member of Parliament needed the capacity to read English
but not necessarily to speak it; and a capacity to understand Kiswahili but not
necessarily to speak or read it. This situation at times had complications of its
own, and the government did little to prepare Kiswahili for the onerous task of
legislative discourse, not to mention the expansion of its role to other areas of
government and to the realm of education.
By according Kiswahili a co-­official status with English, however, the new
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Constitution has now moved the language beyond the symbolic nationalist
status it has enjoyed since 1974, and places greater responsibility on the govern-
ment to invest in its development and consolidation. Indeed, the new Constitu-
tion contains a schedule establishing the time frame by which the various
chapters and articles must be enacted. Chapter 2, which incorporates the article
on Kiswahili’s new official role, must be implemented in five years’ time
(Republic of Kenya, 2010). The expectation is that the bilingual official lan-
guage policy will be more specifically defined and come into full effect by 2015.
Toward this end, the Kenya Ministry of Culture and National Heritage con-
stituted a Kenya Languages Policy Consultative Council with the responsibility
of articulating a comprehensive Kenya Language Policy and designing a bill that
would lay out the procedures for the implementation of Article 7. Procedurally,
the policy document and the bill would then be subjected to national discussion
by various language stakeholders, and revised by the Council in light of this dis-
cussion, before it is finally presented to the attorney-­general for tabling in the
Cabinet and Parliament for final discussion and voting. It is therefore too early
to predict the final policy outcome of this process.
Yet from my discussions with many Kenyans and Kenyan officials in govern-
mental and non-­governmental institutions in July and August 2011, I believe a
certain consensus is emerging. The role of English as the principal and sole
medium of instruction, at least from the fourth grade of elementary education
onwards, will remain unchallenged. What seems to have developed in the past
decade or so into a strong nationalist attachment to Kiswahili has not yet trans-
lated into a revolutionary linguistic fervor similar to the one that accompanied
Tanzania’s politico-­economic move to the left. Even when there have been
substantial efforts to Africanize the educational curriculum, we have not wit-
nessed any inclination toward a linguistic policy shift in medium of instruction.
In fact, the general mood in the country seems to be in favor of increasing
rather than decreasing government investment in promoting more effective
teaching of the English language. This situation has arisen from the aforemen-
tioned concern that national student performance in English is falling and that
this decline is having an adverse effect on the learning of other subjects critical
to socioeconomic advancement, at both the individual and national levels. The
question of English language proficiency is, of course, complicated by the fact
152   A. Mazrui

there is already a Kenya-­specific variety of English that is emerging (Schmied,

1988). In view of this development, should Kenya’s educational system con-
tinue to be guided by its former colonial power, Britain, in defining the stand-
ard norm by which Kenyan students should be assessed? Is it possible that
English language proficiency in the country is, in fact, on the rise, but the
national examinations designed by the Kenya National Examination Council
lead to the opposite conclusion only because they are pegged to a “foreign” lin-
guistic norm? Unfortunately, such questions, precipitated by transformations in
English within the specific Kenyan social experience, have not yet featured in
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policy discussions about the medium of instruction in Kenyan schools.

If the place of English is not likely to be challenged by the bilingual official
language policy under the new constitutional order, Kiswahili may nonetheless
experience some gains in education. As was indicated earlier, Kiswahili has been
a required and examinable language for both elementary and high school educa-
tion in Kenya since 1983. This requirement, however, has so far been mandated
only for those schools that adhere to the so-­called 8-4-4 Kenyan curriculum.
Many private schools in the country follow a different curriculum, especially
the British-­based General Certificate of Education series. As Kiswahili’s newly
acquired official status becomes consolidated, all schools may now choose or be
required to make Kiswahili a compulsory subject, irrespective of the curriculum
that the schools elect to adopt. The number of students majoring in Kiswahili at
the university level has increased dramatically since the language became a com-
pulsory subject at the secondary and primary levels. With the new constitutional
provision, there may be a push to make Kiswahili and English compulsory
service languages at all Kenyan universities irrespective of a student’s chosen
field of study.
With the enactment of the new constitution, Kenya has undergone a major
shift in national administrative and legislative structure, from a unitary govern-
ment to a devolved government through the formation of “counties,” each
with its own governor and legislature. According to Article 174 of the new
constitution, some of the objectives of devolution include:

• to give power of self-­governance to the people and enhance the participa-

tion of the people in the exercise of the powers of the State and in making
decisions affecting them; and
• to recognize the right of communities to manage their own affairs and to
further their development.

One of the challenges that will face the ongoing deliberations of the constitu-
tional implementation committee is the articulation of the boundaries between
national objectives of devolution – essentially, the promotion of national unity
through the recognition and respect of diversity – and county rights as they
pertain to the choice of medium of instruction. What should be the state’s
Language and Education in Kenya   153

response if Kisumu County or Malindi County decided that their greatest edu-
cational interests lie in instituting Dholuo and Chigiryama, respectively, as the
media of instruction for all schools within their county limits? Should the state
support a democratic decision by Mombasa County, for example, to have
Kiswahili as the sole medium of instruction or to establish a bilingual instruc-
tional media program, with arts subjects being taught in Kiswahili and the sci-
ences in English? Responses to these and many other questions about language
and education in Kenya will be needed as the new constitutional order emerges.
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Conclusion
This chapter began with discussion of the disadvantages sustained by the English
language in the early years of British colonial settler rule in Kenya, without
influential African aristocrats to plead the African case at Westminster or the
Colonial Office. After World War II, and especially with independence from
colonial rule, English experienced a reversal of destiny, from colonial disadvan-
tage to a postcolonial windfall that has meant the consolidation of English in the
country as a whole. This situation has led to a certain linguistic complacency
that English is the only rational choice as the country’s medium of education.
Furthermore, since independence, individual socioeconomic advancement and
national economic development have been pegged to the English language,
both in policy and in practice. There was a time when those aspiring to migrate
from rural to urban areas would try to acquire Kiswahili to improve their
chances of employment in the urban metropolis. But as both the Whiteley
(1974b) and the Kembo-­Sure (1999) studies show, there is a growing demand
for English even in the rural areas, and in several parts of the country rural
dwellers proficient in Kiswahili are also likely to have English in their reper-
toire. It is still true that market forces continue to operate in Kenya in two
streams, favoring Kiswahili in the Jua Kali (low-­level informal) economic acti­
vities, and English for the more formal sector of the economy. Possessing both
languages certainly widens one’s range of economic opportunities, but the quest
for upward socioeconomic mobility still advantages English over Kiswahili.
From its roots in colonial history to new forces unleashed by the postcolonial
dispensation, then, English has succeeded in consolidating itself sufficiently to
effectively preclude serious discussion about the possibility of any other linguis-
tic alternative in education.
Nonetheless, the political changes that have been ushered in by the new
constitutional order have created new possibilities for Kiswahili. At the very
least, the study of Kiswahili is bound to intensify in schools and universities as
part of more general education requirements for the acquisition of critical skills.
There is no doubt that Kiswahili will make substantial gains in the legislature,
because all legislative records will now be required to appear in both official
languages. In order to facilitate greater access to public information and services,
154   A. Mazrui

bureaucratic language use in national and especially in county government

agencies is likely to put greater emphasis on Kiswahili than ever before. These
and other developments resulting directly from the spaces that have been
opened up by the new Constitution may help Kiswahili gain additional instru-
mental value beyond the informal economic sector and mass politics. In the
final analysis, then, what the new Constitution demonstrates is that the struggle
between the forces of dependence and the forces of authenticity (Mazrui, 2002)
is still very much alive in Kenya, and debates about language in education will
continue to be a site of this struggle for many years to come.
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Curtis, H. A. (1965). The new primary approach. Kenya Educational Journal (October),
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397–454). Nairobi: Oxford University Press.
Gorman, T. P. (1974b). Patterns of language use among school children and their
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The Hague: Mouton.
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267–281). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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(Volume 17, Part 2, June 12–August 27, 1969). Nairobi: Government Printers.
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Whitely, S. (1971). English language as a tool of British neocolonialism. East Africa
Journal, 8 (12), 4–6.
8
LANGUAGE-­IN-EDUCATION
POLICY AND PLANNING IN
AFRICA’S MONOLINGUAL
KINGDOMS OF LESOTHO AND
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SWAZILAND

Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

Language policy and planning in general, and in postcolonial Africa in particu-

lar, is an interest-­driven game, one in which the stakeholders, especially the
elite, always plan to win by advancing their own interests. I am borrowing the
term game from game theory, where it refers to any situation in which there are
at least two players, each with a number of possible options or strategies to
choose from in order to achieve desirable, payoff-­driven outcomes (Harsanyi,
1977; Laitin, 1993). Game theory itself is concerned with predicting real-­life
human behavior in various social situations and explaining how the players in a
game will act to promote their interests (Harsanyi, 1977). With respect to lan-
guage planning, Harsanyi (1977) points out that game theory has predictive
power to determine whether a language policy will fail or succeed. The predic-
tion is based on players’ moves or actions: whether these diverge from or con-
verge with the goals of the game. The moves diverge from the goals of the
game if the stakeholders promote the policy publicly but subvert it privately, as
will be argued later with respect to language policy and planning in Lesotho and
Swaziland.
In Africa, there is perhaps no better area to approach language planning as an
interest-­driven game than status planning for the indigenous African languages
in education. This chapter discusses status planning for the indigenous languages
in Africa’s monolingual kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland. Wardhaugh (1986)
defines status planning as an activity intended to change the function of a lan-
guage or a variety of a language and the rights of those who use it. For Bourdieu
(1991), it is an exercise in regulating the power relationship between languages
(or products in the sense of Cooper [1989]) and their respective users in the lin-
guistic marketplace – that is, the social context in which the languages are used.
Policy in Africa’s Monolingual Kingdoms   157

Status planning, as Wiley (1996) describes it, is often associated with the official
recognition that national governments attach to various languages, and with
authoritative attempts to restrict language use in various contexts.
Studies conducted within the status planning paradigm in the African context
have generally been concerned with, among other things, the perennial issues of
(1) choosing indigenous languages for official use (Chumbow, 1987; Djite,
1993; Kamwangamalu, 1997a), (2) determining the role of mother-­tongue edu-
cation in relation to education in a former colonial language (Africa, 1980;
Akinnaso, 1993), and (3) explaining why language policies in most African
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countries appear to be a replica of inherited colonial language policies, for they

put former colonial languages on a pedestal to the detriment of the indigenous
languages (Bamgbose, 1991; Webb, 1995). The literature on these and related
issues has focused on the language planning situation in Africa’s multilingual
countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Cameroon, but not much is known
about these issues in the context of arguably monolingual countries such as
Lesotho (Khati, 1995; Matsela, 1995) and Swaziland (Kunene, 1997). This
chapter aims to fill this gap, with a focus on status planning in education for
seSotho and siSwati in Lesotho and Swaziland, respectively. English aside,
99.7% of Lesotho’s population of 2,230,819 million speaks seSotho1 as mother
tongue; while Swaziland’s entire population, estimated to be 1,337,186 at mid-­
2011, speaks siSwati as mother tongue. In spite of this, in both Lesotho and
Swaziland English enjoys far more esteem and privileges than its co-­official lan-
guages, seSotho and siSwati.
This chapter sets out to explain this mismatch between language policies and
practices in education in the two kingdoms. It proposes that if status planning in
education in both Lesotho and Swaziland is to succeed, it must be treated as a
marketing problem. This idea is grounded in game theory and related theoret-
ical frameworks, especially linguistic instrumentalism (Wee, 2003) and language
economics (Grin, 1994, 2001; Vaillancourt & Grin, 2000). Language economics
deals with economic considerations in language planning, and focuses on the
ways in which linguistic and economic variables influence one another. One
central issue in this framework is the relevance of language as a commodity in
the acquisition of which individual actors may have a good reason to invest.
The related framework, linguistic instrumentalism, is “a view of language that
justifies its existence in a community in terms of its usefulness in achieving spe-
cific utilitarian goals such as access to economic development or social mobil-
ity” (Wee, 2003, p. 211). I will return to these frameworks in the last section of
this chapter, where I explore the idea that status planning for the indigenous
languages, namely seSotho in Lesotho and siSwati in Swaziland, must be treated
as a marketing problem. But first, I shall discuss status planning in Africa to
provide the background against which status planning in Lesotho and Swaziland
can be better understood. I will then discuss language-­in-education policies in
the two kingdoms, and finally consider some of the factors that have doomed
158   N. M. Kamwangamalu

these policies to failure, with a focus on elite closure and the lack of instrumen-
tal value for the two indigenous languages, seSotho and siSwati.

Status Planning in African Education: The Myth of

Multilingualism as a Problem
In Africa, the debate on language planning in education has been going on for
the past 50 years, and is likely to continue for years to come. At the heart of this
debate has been the duel between two ideologies, vernacularization and inter-
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nationalization (Cobarrubias, 1983). Internationalization refers to the adoption of

a non-­indigenous language as an official language, as is the case for former colo-
nial languages such as English, French, and Portuguese in post-­colonial Africa;
vernacularization refers to the restoration and adoption of an indigenous African
language as an official language, as is the case for siSwati and seSotho in Swazi-
land and Lesotho, and for isiZulu, isiXhosa, seSotho, siSwati, Venda, and other
official indigenous languages in post-­apartheid South Africa. Notwithstanding
the type of ideology adopted, in Africa scholars in the field of language planning
agree that African language-­in-education policies have failed to achieve the
prime objective for which they were designed, namely to promote the indigen-
ous languages as the medium of instruction in the educational system. To
explain this state of affairs, the finger is often pointed at the biblical story of the
Tower of Babel, or what Davies (1996) has termed “the fatality of Babel” (p.
489). According to this story, the descendants of Noah tried to build a tower
leading to heaven, but their attempt ended in chaos when God confused the
common language that enabled them to communicate and punished them by
making them speak many different languages. As Mülhäusler (1996) observes,
this story portraying linguistic diversity as a divine punishment has dominated
Western thinking for centuries, with many people believing that a multiplicity
of languages is a problem.
The argument that multilingualism is a problem is often twofold. First, there
are too many languages but limited resources, so governments cannot afford to
provide children with an education in their own languages (Laitin, 1992).
Second, it is contended that the promotion of any indigenous language for offi-
cial use often elicits opposition from the elites of the “non-­chosen” languages
(Laitin, 1992). From this perspective, issues relating to multilingualism “are
understood and framed in relation to obstacles they present to institutions or
more generally to social cohesion” (Lo Bianco, 1996, p. 7). Laitin illustrates this
with the following statement by Chief Anthony Enahoro of Nigeria, an Edo
speaker, in which he opposes the choice of Hausa as the official language of the
state:

[A]s one who comes from a minority tribe, I deplore the continuing evid-
ence in this country that people wish to impose their customs, their
Policy in Africa’s Monolingual Kingdoms   159

l­anguages, and even their way of life upon the smaller tribes. . . . My
people have a language, and that language was handed down through a
thousand years of tradition and custom. When the Benin Empire
exchanged ambassadors with Portugal, many of the new Nigerian lan-
guages of today did not exist.
(Laitin, 1992, p. 96)

Accordingly, language policies framed within the language as a problem paradigm

(Ruiz, 1990) are usually aimed at eliminating the source of the problem: “eradi-
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cate multilingualism and replace it with monolingualism” (Strauss, 1996, p. 7).

One way African countries have attempted to eradicate multilingualism is by
granting official status to selected indigenous languages and, at the same time,
ensuring covertly that these languages do not enjoy significant use in domains
such as education, parliament, government and administration, and the
economy. Therefore, rather than implement policies that promote the indigen-
ous African languages in these domains, most African countries have opted for
former colonial languages such as English, French, and Portuguese, or what
Pool (1993) calls the language of rule – that is, the language through which the
ruling elite structure social inequalities. It is argued that former colonial lan-
guages must be used as the medium of instruction throughout the entire educa-
tional system because they are neutral in that they do not belong to any
ethnolinguistic group within a polity. It seems, therefore, that the cost-­related
arguments for monolingualism underlying the “language as a problem para-
digm” are fundamentally reductionist (Strauss, 1996, p. 4).
No matter how convincing the arguments against the biblical Tower of
Babel might be, they do not explain why Africa’s monolingual kingdoms, such
as Lesotho and Swaziland, have not succeeded in raising the status of their indi-
genous languages in domains such as the educational system. It is clear, then,
that the failure of language-­in-education policies in both kingdoms requires a
different explanation. This chapter argues that, ethnolinguistic rivalries aside, the
factors that impede implementation of language policies in multilingual coun-
tries in Africa, particularly elite closure and the low instrumental value of the
indigenous languages vis-­à-vis former colonial languages, operate in the same
fashion to impede policy implementation in monolingual countries such as
Lesotho and Swaziland. Before I consider these two factors, I will first provide a
brief sociolinguistic and historical background to language policymaking in the
two kingdoms. This background is important because, as Tollefson (1991)
remarks, “discussions of solutions to the language problems facing individuals
must begin with a deep appreciation for the powerful historical and structural
forces that pattern individual language behaviour” (p. 39). In other words, a
polity’s social history plays a central role in language planning, whether at the
micro level of interpersonal communication or the macro level of state forma-
tion (Ricento, 2006).
160   N. M. Kamwangamalu

Lesotho and Swaziland: A Sociolinguistic Profile

Lesotho, a small, land-­locked mountainous kingdom-­state of 30,355 square kil-
ometers (11,720 square miles), about the same size as Belgium, is enclosed on all
sides by the Republic of South Africa. Coates (1966) describes Lesotho as “one
of only two countries in the world, including the Republic of San Marino,
which is entirely enveloped by another country, has no access to the exterior
except through that country, and thus by that country’s grace and favor” (p. 1).
Lesotho is situated at the highest part of the Drakensberg escarpment on the
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eastern rim of the South African Plateau (Hutcheson, 1998). The various clans
(Bafokeng, Barolong, Bakwena, Batlokwa, and others) that make up Lesotho
are said to have originated from South Africa, and more specifically from the
present Mpumalanga (formerly Transvaal) in the 17th and 18th centuries (Ellen-
berger & MacGregor, 1969). They were later united into one nation by King
Moshweshwe I in the early 19th century. Formerly known as Basutoland or
Basutholand, Lesotho became a British protectorate in 1868 at the request of
the Basutho people’s chief, who feared South Africa’s Boer (farmer) expansion-
ism. It was annexed to the then-­British Cape Colony, now Cape Town, in
1871, but detached to become a separate British colony in 1884 (Brown, 1999).
After almost a century under British rule, Lesotho became an independent state
on October 4, 1966. The kingdom has an estimated population2 of 2,230,819
million people, 99.7% of whom identify as Basotho and speak seSotho as
mother tongue (Matsela, 1995).
It is reported that before the colonial era, Lesotho used seSotho officially and
nationally for administrative, educational, religious, social, and other purposes
(Mohasi, 1995). The fortunes of seSotho changed when Lesotho became a
British colony in 1868. At the start of the colonial era, seSotho was demoted
from its official status and accorded national status. In other words, seSotho was
excluded from the higher domains of language use, which, as a result of coloni-
zation, had become the monopoly of English, the kingdom’s new official lan-
guage (Mohasi, 1995). When Lesotho became an independent state in 1966,
seSotho regained its official status and now enjoys, constitutionally at least,
parity with English, the kingdom’s second official language. The status of both
seSotho and English is enshrined in the Lesotho Laws (1966, Vol. II, Act 21),
which state that “the national language [of Lesotho] is seSotho and the official
languages are seSotho and English” (Matsela, 1995, p. 63). A subsequent docu-
ment, the Official Language Act of 1966, reaffirms the status of English and
seSotho in the kingdom: “the languages of the Kingdom of Lesotho are seSotho
and English, and accordingly no instrument or transaction shall be held invalid
by reason only that it is expressed or conducted in one or the other of those
languages” (The Laws of Lesotho, Vol. X1, 1996, quoted in Khati, 1995, p. 33).
Lesotho is territorially and demographically larger than Swaziland, which is
described as one of the smallest political entities, after The Gambia, in mainland
Policy in Africa’s Monolingual Kingdoms   161

Africa (Levin, 1999). Covering an area of only 17,363 square kilometers (6,704
square miles), which makes it about half the size of Lesotho, Swaziland is sur-
rounded by the Republic of South Africa on the north, west, and south, and
separated from the Indian Ocean on the east by the Republic of Mozambique.
Historically, Swaziland emerged as a cohesive nation in the early 19th century
(Levin, 1999). The people of Swaziland, estimated by the World Bank to
number 1,337,186 at mid-­2011, migrated from Central Africa toward the end
of the 15th century (Matsebula, 1987/1972). Swaziland became a British terri-
tory following the Boer War (now renamed the South African War) in 1903
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and obtained independence from Britain on September 6, 1968. Like Lesotho,

Swaziland inherited not only the administrative infrastructure set up by Britain
during the colonial era, but also English, the language through which Britain
had ruled the Swazi kingdom (Kamwangamalu & Chisanga, 1996). Besides
English, siSwati is the only indigenous language spoken in the kingdom and is
spoken as a native language by virtually all Swazis. Thus, unlike Africa’s multi-
lingual countries, at the time of independence the Kingdom of Swaziland did
not experience any difficulty formulating a language policy since there were
only two languages to choose from, siSwati and English. Accordingly, both lan-
guages were adopted as official languages of the kingdom. This policy, recorded
in a Swaziland Cabinet Paper (Swaziland Government, 1976), states that
“siSwati and English will be the two official languages of Swaziland.”

Official Languages and Language Practices in Education

Given their sociolinguistic background and official language policies, Lesotho
and Swaziland should not have a “language problem” at all. This section argues,
however, that they do. In both kingdoms, the relationship between English and
its co-­official indigenous languages, seSotho in Lesotho and siSwati in Swazi-
land, remains diglossic, much as it was in the colonial era, with English as the
“high” language and seSotho and siSwati as the “low” languages (Ferguson,
1959). Put differently, in both countries the indigenous languages do not enjoy
parity with English in the higher domains such as the educational system.
Rather, apart from being used as the medium of instruction in the first three
years of primary education,3 seSotho and siSwati are used mainly for daily oral
communication and for transmission of the indigenous traditions and cultures
from generation to generation. The two languages are so functionally distinct in
their respective polities that there is no need for English usage beyond the con-
fines of the classroom and other formal domains. However, parents in both
countries object to the use of seSotho and siSwati as the medium of instruction
even in lower primary education, because neither language is associated with
any economic value in the local linguistic marketplace. According to Coulmas
(1992), the market value of a language is determined in relation to other lan-
guages in the economy. In this regard, English is far more appealing to the
162   N. M. Kamwangamalu

masses than seSotho or siSwati, especially in education, and is the language in

which all parents want their children to be educated. English is associated with
employment opportunities; it has more prestige than seSotho and siSwati both
locally and internationally; it is the language of government and administration
and international communication; it is the language of power and status and the
language of the elite; it is the language which, as Lynn (1995) describes it,
“ensures that . . . the elite reproduces itself ” (p. 55). In short, English is the lan-
guage by which a person’s actual or potential socioeconomic standing in the
community is measured. Proficiency in it, says Gibbons (1987), tends to corre-
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late with educational level, prestigious employment and (not least) with income.
The dominance of English over seSotho and siSwati has raised concerns in
educational circles in both Lesotho and Swaziland. In Swaziland, for instance, in
a 1987 policy document the Ministry of Education states that the

[t]ime has come now for siSwati to be accorded a bread-­winning status.

While it makes sense to insist on the ability to read, write and speak
English well for those students proceeding with education up to the Uni-
versity and teacher training levels, it is not clear why pupils who are
leaving school at Junior certificate and below should be failed in English
as those are likely to take up hand-­skills employment . . . If such pupils are
failed for not obtaining a good pass in siSwati, that would make more
sense.
(Swaziland Ministry of Education, 1987)

This statement, made a little over two decades ago, sums up the current lan-
guage situation in Swaziland: English remains the “breadwinner” while siSwati,
though a lingua franca in the kingdom, does not have “breadwinner” status
(Kamwangamalu & Chisanga, 1996, p.  290). Thus, Kunene (1997) is right
when she describes siSwati and English as “two official languages of unequal
status,” a description that also fits the language situation in other Southern
African countries, including Lesotho.
In Lesotho, there has been a concern over the perceived decline in education
standards. Some attribute the decline to the seeming lack of communicative
competence in English by both students and teachers alike. It is noted that the
acquisition of content in specialized subjects is dependent upon the mastery of
the language through which the subjects are taught (Matsela, 1995). Accord-
ingly, Matsela and other Lesotho language planners (Khati, 1995; Mohasi, 1995)
wonder whether the mother tongue, seSotho, should not replace English as the
medium of instruction. A similar proposal (which the present chapter does not
advocate) was made by the precursor to the African Union, namely the Organ-
ization of African Unity (OAU), in its Language Plan of Action for Africa. In par-
ticular, one of the aims of the Language Plan of Action for Africa was “to ensure
that African languages, by appropriate provision and practical promotions,
Policy in Africa’s Monolingual Kingdoms   163

assume their rightful role as the means of official communication in the public
affairs of each Member State in replacement of European languages which have hith-
erto played this role” (OAU, 1986, emphasis added). Obviously, replacing Euro-
pean languages with African languages is not a simple or enviable task, especially
given the vested interests of the ruling elite on the one hand, and the instru-
mental value of English (in particular globally) on the other. Also, considering
that in Africa linguistic diversity is the norm and, as Desai (1995) puts it, that
“multilingualism is the African lingua franca” (p. 20), language policies should
be inclusive rather than exclusive, ensuring that African languages coexist with
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rather than replace European languages. Against this background, the question
that arises is not so much whether an indigenous African language such as
seSotho or siSwati should replace English as the instructional medium, but
rather how seSotho in Lesotho and siSwati in Swaziland can be revalorized so
that they and English can function together, not one at the expense of the
other. Revalorizing indigenous languages such as seSotho and siSwati entails, as
Webb (1995) points out, “making [them] desirable and effective [tools] for edu-
cational development, economic opportunity, political participation, social
mobility, and cultural practice” (p. 103).
But why has revalorization not materialized almost 50 years after Lesotho
and Swaziland obtained political independence from Britain? Two factors have
often been singled out as a hindrance to policy implementation: inadequate
financial resources and lack of the political will to change inherited colonial lan-
guage policies (Bamgbose, 1991). To these factors, I would like to add two
more which, to my knowledge, have not been addressed in the context of status
planning in Lesotho and Swaziland: elite closure (Scotton, 1990) and the lack of
instrumental value for each kingdom’s indigenous language in the local linguis-
tic market place. I take up each of these factors in the sections that follow,
beginning with elite closure.

Elite Closure and Status Planning for seSotho and siSwati

Elite closure (Scotton, 1990) refers to the vested interest of the elite in perpetu-
ating the use of “the language of rule” (Pool, 1993), in this case English, in the
higher domains in order to preserve the privileges with which this language is
associated. In so doing, the elite isolate themselves with their privileged lan-
guage, English, from the rest of the population and their languages, seSotho in
Lesotho and siSwati in Swaziland. Elites’ language use becomes compartmental-
ized: they use the language of rule for intra-­elite communication, and an indi-
genous lingua franca (seSotho or siSwati) for communication with the masses
(Laitin, 1992). To preserve the privileges with which knowledge of the lan-
guage of rule is associated, the elite tend to covertly resist language-­in-education
policies they themselves have designed apparently to promote the language of
the masses (Akinnaso, 1993; Bamgbose, 1991). Drawing on game theory, Laitin
164   N. M. Kamwangamalu

(1992) refers to this as the “private subversion of the public good” (p. 43) – that
is, the practice by the elite of agreeing with language policy publicly but sub-
verting it privately. The elite subvert the policies by theoretically giving seSotho
and siSwati official status to claim parity with English, but not allowing the two
indigenous languages and the majority of their speakers access to important
domains open to speakers of English (e.g., the educational system, socio-
economic and political participation, or employment).
In both Lesotho and Swaziland, as in neighboring countries, government
officials as well as most members of the ruling elite prefer to send their own
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children to schools where English is the sole medium of instruction from kin-
dergarten or grade 1 onwards. This practice is widespread in African coun-
tries. A case in point is Tanzania, which has often been vaunted for its policy
of vernacularization with regard to Kiswahili. Despite the enthusiasm of the
post-­uhuru (independence) years, Tanzania has not succeeded in replacing
English with Kiswahili as the medium of learning in secondary and tertiary
education. As Prah (1995) observes, the very policy of gradual takeover by
Kiswahili has been seriously challenged by elite Tanzanians. Along these lines,
Mafu (1999) reports that the elite have found two ways to undermine Kiswa-
hili. They opt for the private English academies that have mushroomed in the
country’s urban centers, where their children can have an education through
the medium of English; or, alternatively, they send their children overseas or
to neighboring countries, often at taxpayers’ expense, to secure that educa-
tion. Like Tanzania and other African countries, Lesotho and Swaziland have
constitutionally created space for their respective indigenous languages but
have hardly attempted to alter what was handed down through the colonial
experience (Prah, 1995). The exclusion, in practice, of seSotho and siSwati
from higher domains such as education serves to deprive the population of
access to the modern world and to democratization and development (Phillip-
son, 1996).

Linguistic Instrumentalism and Status Planning for seSotho and

siSwati
Wee (2003) defines linguistic instrumentalism as “a view of language that justifies
its existence in a community in terms of its usefulness in achieving specific utili-
tarian goals such as access to economic development or social mobility” (p.
211). In particular, he notes that linguistic instrumentalism is often a later addi-
tion to a traditional view of language as a marker of cultural identity and
authenticity – a view that often leads to a tendency to devalue or marginalize
local vernaculars. In contrast, linguistic instrumentalism assumes the continued
importance of multi- or bilingualism, so that the language whose economic
value is being championed is acquired in addition to English (or other dominant
languages), never in place of it (Wee, 2003).
Policy in Africa’s Monolingual Kingdoms   165

Wee has used the concept of linguistic instrumentalism to describe the lan-
guage situation in Singapore, where Mandarin, traditionally seen as a repository
of Chinese identity, culture, and tradition, has become a commodity that even
non-­Chinese Singaporeans, such as the Malays and Tamils, seek to acquire
because of its economic value and payoffs. A similar attraction to Chinese is
noted among immigrant children in Australia (Gopinath, 2008). Gopinath
reports that most immigrant children opt to learn Chinese over any other inter-
national language, for they are aware of the material benefits that can accrue to
them as a result of their knowledge of the Chinese language.
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In Africa, and in the kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland in particular, poli-

cymakers do not yet view the indigenous languages as commodities. It is not
surprising that individuals in both kingdoms are more attracted to English-­
medium education than to an education through the medium of seSotho or
siSwati. This is due, in part, to what Tuominen (1999) has termed utility-­
maximization – that is, the costs and benefits of educating children in a com-
munity’s ethnic language. In particular, the question is whether educating
children in a community language will benefit them materially vis-­à-vis educat-
ing them in a language of wider communication such as English. In Lesotho
and Swaziland, the perceived costs and benefits usually tip the balance in favor
of English rather than seSotho or siSwati. Also, as Fishman, Cooper, and
Conrad (1977) remark pointedly, languages are rarely acquired for their own
sake; they are acquired as keys to other things that are desired in life. As I have
observed elsewhere (Kamwangamalu, 2003), in the context of Lesotho and
Swaziland (or any other countries in postcolonial Africa), these “other things”
include the desire to be able to have access to employment, which now gener-
ally requires knowledge of English; and the desire to move up the social ladder
and identify with the power elite, whose language practices involve an extensive
use of English, the current language of rule, power, and prestige, and one via
which, as Lynn (1995) notes, the elite reproduces itself. It is not surprising that
individuals in both Lesotho and Swaziland view English as the sole mechanism
by which they and their children can achieve significant vertical social mobility.
As the demand for English increases, the few African mothers who have know-
ledge of this much-­sought-after commodity will, as Kwesiga (1994) puts it sar-
castically, “start teaching their children English before they are born” (p. 58).
For status planning for seSotho and siSwati to succeed, then, these languages
must become what Xiao (1998) has termed social and economic mobilizers – that is,
they must be vested with at least some of the material privileges and perquisites
that are currently associated with English alone. Like English, seSotho and
siSwati must become the languages of access to resources and employment,
political participation, and upward social mobility (Webb, 1995). Unless the
two kingdoms’ language policies are revised and geared toward the proposed
targets, efforts to promote their respective indigenous languages will be doomed
to failure.
166   N. M. Kamwangamalu

The prominence of English in the current system of subtractive bilingual

education in Lesotho and Swaziland has rendered these countries’ respective
indigenous languages instrumentally valueless. In Lesotho, for instance, Khati
(1995, p. 32) reports that it is not uncommon to hear English-­knowing bilin-
guals ask of students who study seSotho at tertiary level questions such as “What
is he going to do with seSotho?” This important question suggests that seSotho
and English in Lesotho, like siSwati and English in Swaziland, do not have equal
value in the local linguistic marketplace. Thus, the question brings to the fore
the issue that preoccupies the majority of language consumers in both Lesotho
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and Swaziland, namely the socioeconomic value of seSotho and siSwati vis-­à-vis
English. The next section of this chapter is devoted to this issue.

Status Planning in Lesotho and Swaziland as a Marketing

Problem
My goal in this section is to make the case for status planning for siSwati and
seSotho to be treated as a marketing problem. Following language economics
(Coulmas, 1992; Grin, 1994; Vaillancourt & Grin, 2000), game theory (Har-
sanyi, 1977; Laitin, 1993), and linguistic instrumentalism (Wee, 2003), I argue
that since siSwati and Sesotho are goods destined to be given a price by powers
capable of providing credit (Bourdieu, 1991), the consumers will accept or
reject these goods on the basis of their value in the local linguistic marketplace.
Viewing status planning for these two languages as a marketing problem
entails, as Cooper (1989) puts it, “developing the right product backed by the
right promotion and put in the right place at the right price” (p. 72). In regard to
the product, Cooper (1989) argues that language planners must recognize,
identify, or design products which the potential consumer will find attractive.
These products are to be defined and audiences targeted on the basis of (empiri-
cally determined) consumer needs. Promotion of a communicative innovation
such as language use refers to efforts to induce potential users to adopt it,
whether adoption is viewed as awareness, positive evaluation, proficiency, or
usage. Place refers to the provision of adequate channels of distribution and
response. That is, a person motivated to buy a product must know where to
find it. The price of a consumer good is viewed as the key to determining the
good’s appeals to the consumers.
Cooper’s framework fits in well with the language situation in both Lesotho
and Swaziland. Policymakers in both countries should not have any difficulty
identifying the product (seSotho or siSwati) or the place where the product can be
found, particularly since Lesotho and Swaziland are monolingual countries.
Efforts for status planning in both kingdoms should instead concentrate on the
price and promotion of the kingdoms’ respective languages. In regard to the price,
these languages need to be vested with some of the power and privileges with
which only English is currently associated. After all, for language consumers the
Policy in Africa’s Monolingual Kingdoms   167

central question is not whether an African language such as seSotho or siSwati

should be used as a medium of learning; rather, they are far more interested in
the outcomes of an education through the medium of siSwati or seSotho and
how it would compare materially with the outcomes of an education through
the medium of English. For instance, would an education in the medium of
seSotho or siSwati ensure upward social mobility for the speakers of either of
these two languages? Would such an education enhance their standard of living?
Would it give them a competitive edge in the employment market? Or, put
differently, what benefits would individuals actually reap, particularly on the
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labor market, as a result of their skills in the language? And how would these
benefits compare to the benefits deriving from the skills in a foreign language
such as English (Grin, 1995)? As I have observed elsewhere (Kamwangamalu,
1997b), it does not take long for language consumers today to realize that an
education in the medium of an indigenous language does not ensure social
mobility or improved socioeconomic status; that those who can afford it, among
them policymakers themselves, send their children to English-­medium schools;
and that only an education through the medium of English opens up doors to
the outside world as well as to high-­paying jobs. In this regard, Eastman (1990)
is right when she says that people would not want to be educated in their indi-
genous language if that language had no cachet in the broader social, political,
and economic context.
An education in seSotho or siSwati will appeal to the speakers of these lan-
guages if they have value in the linguistic market. This value could be achieved
by, among other things, requiring certified (i.e., school-­acquired) knowledge of
these languages as one of the criteria for access to employment in the private as
well as the public sector. The domains for these languages need to be expanded
to include higher domains such as the educational system, which is currently the
sole preserve of English. But against the background of elite closure and linguis-
tic instrumentalism, it remains to be seen whether in this century (which the
former president of South Africa Thabo Mbeki has named “the African
century”) the indigenous African languages such as seSotho and siSwati will
break through the barriers to achieve full use in education and other higher
domains.

Conclusion
This chapter is concerned with the issue of status planning for seSotho and
siSwati in Lesotho and Swaziland, respectively. It has argued that in the context
of these two countries the claim that multilingualism hinders the development
of indigenous languages is a myth, especially since both countries are linguisti-
cally homogenous. Building on previous work (Kamwangamalu, 1997a, 2000),
the chapter has suggested that the key to successful status planning for siSwati
and seSotho lies in assigning these languages a socioeconomic value in the local
168   N. M. Kamwangamalu

linguistic marketplace, where they would compete on a relatively equal footing

with English, the current language of rule (Pool, 1993). In the absence of this
socioeconomic value, market forces will continue to drive schools to provide
the education that the people want (Vorhies, 1992), most likely through the
medium of English, despite the accessibility and inclusive nature of seSotho and
siSwati, and the elitist and exclusive nature of English.

NOTES
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1 seSotho and siSwati are also spoken in the neighboring Republic of South Africa,
where they are among that country’s 11 official languages.
2 The population of Lesotho, 2,230,819 million, includes about 250,000 speakers of
minority languages of Nguni origin, namely Sethepu, Sephuthi and Sethebele, who
are said to have been assimilated into the Sotho-­speaking communities (Khati, 1995;
Matsela, 1995).
3 In Lesotho, theoretically seSotho serves as the medium of instruction until grade 6,
but, as Matsela (1995) remarks, English is actually used as the medium of instruction
from upper primary level (i.e., from grade 4) to university, much as it is in Swaziland.

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PART IV

Language and Global

Capitalism
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The chapters in this part of the book deal with the following critical issue first
considered in Chapter 1: How have the processes of global capitalism affected
language policies in education? In this regard, the central language-­related
concern is of course the spread of English. In Chapter 9, Kayoko Hashimoto
examines English promotion policies in Japan, where new curricula in primary
and secondary schools have recently been adopted as part of the decade-­long
government effort to cultivate “Japanese with English abilities.” Although Japan
is one of the most striking cases in which English is discursively linked with
national economic security and individual opportunity, Hashimoto’s analysis of
the new curricula reveals that the situation involves far greater complexity than
merely the promotion of English. Rather than a clear effort to teach English at
ever-­earlier grades, the new curricula are part of a broader educational policy
that includes promotion of Japanese as the central component in a rejuvenated
national cultural identity.
In India, the recent and widely publicized shift to a market economy has had
an enormous impact on language in education, in particular in the intense inter-
est in English as the key to access to the middle class. In addition, the current
state effort to dramatically increase the number of educational institutions, espe-
cially at the tertiary level, has meant that many important language policy
decisions are shaping the language practices of a growing number of institutions.
In Chapter 10, E. Annamalai examines English-­promotion policies in India,
with particular attention to issues of access: Which learners in India have access
to English instruction? Which learners have access to English outside of school?
What is the quality of English instruction available to different groups? Annama-
lai’s answers to these questions raise disturbing concerns about the hidden costs
of current Indian policy.
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9
THE JAPANISATION OF ENGLISH
LANGUAGE EDUCATION

Promotion of the National Language within

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Foreign Language Policy

Kayoko Hashimoto

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Japanese government proposed a plan
to increase Japanese people’s English proficiency in order to help Japan remain
competitive in the international market after the “lost decade”, which was a dif-
ficult period for the country owing to the collapse of the bubble economy and
numerous natural disasters. The lost decade has now become “the lost two
decades” (The Economist, 2009; Okabe, 2010; Tamny, 2011); and after the Great
East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, the coming decade is likely to be
more challenging than ever. The calm and orderly way in which the tsunami
and earthquake victims sought to cope with these disasters has been widely
reported around the world in tone of both surprise and admiration (Belson &
Onishi, 2011; Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2011). While the nation has demon-
strated solidarity during this crisis, the intense employment insecurity due to
ongoing financial difficulties has tended to make Japanese youth more “inward-­
looking” (Yamamoto & Iwaki, 2011); in particular, the business sector has
expressed concern at the sharp decline in the number of students studying over-
seas, because this will eventually affect the performance of their overseas offices,
which rely on overseas-­educated graduates to join their workforce (Asahi
Shimbun, 2011). While Japanese youth have been criticised for their negative
attitude and lack of interest in overseas opportunities, their “inwardness” (内向
き志向) is not unrelated to the position of the nation itself at the beginning of
the new century.
As I have argued elsewhere (Hashimoto, 2009), a negative view of globalisa-
tion and an emphasis on the positive qualities of Japan and its people form the
background to the Japanese attitude of self-­reliance in tackling adversity. As
Fairclough (2001) points out, the world has not suddenly globalised, but a new
global order has gradually developed, prompting “the struggle to impose or
176   K. Hashimoto

resist the new order”, which is “in large part a struggle for or against a new lan-
guage” (p. 205). English is certainly not a new foreign language in Japan, but
the government’s approach to the teaching of English as a foreign language
(TEFL) has been designed to assure that the language of the new order does not
undermine the core identity of the Japanese nation and its people.
Japan’s English language policies are one example of the reconstruction of
national and cultural identity through the discourse of English in Asian contexts
(Tsui & Tollefson, 2007). It has been pointed out that the unsuccessful delivery
of English as a second (or foreign) language programmes in primary education
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in some Asian countries is a result of resistance or objections to the spread of

English; even in countries where English is a required subject, students’ “demo-
tivation for learning English is observed to derive from such resistance as well as
from problems in instruction policies” (Baldauf, Kaplan, Kamwangamalu, &
Bryant, 2011). “English education” (英語教育) has been one of the hotly
debated educational issues in Japan precisely because it involves a balance
between maintaining the national identity and legitimising the power of English
in the society in order to achieve international economic success. It is indeed a
complex matter to argue for either the success or the failure of “English educa-
tion” in Japan, because it involves many parties such as policy makers, the edu-
cation industry, children and their parents, and educational practitioners,
including native speakers of English serving as teachers or assistants. While some
blame the bureaucracy for the failure of government-­initiated reforms (Aspinall,
2011; Cutts, 1997; Hall, 1998), others believe that English has been dehuman-
ised and decontextualised (LoCastro, 1991), as well as deconstructed (Hashim-
oto, 2000) by the Japanese education system, or that the language has tended to
be “Japanised” to some extent (Kachru, 2005). The recent focus on the treat-
ment of native speakers of English in Japanese society (Houghton & Rivers,
forthcoming) highlights the relative status of Japanese and foreign teachers of
English in Japan, which differs from the “native speakerism” suggested by Holli­
day (2005). Indeed, there is a strong relationship between the cultural represen-
tations of teachers and curriculum delivery in the Japanese education system.
This chapter examines the most recent curriculum changes in Japanese
primary schools, junior high schools, and senior high schools for both English
and Japanese subjects in order to identify elements of continuity in the changes
that have occurred. I analyse language policy documents, and in particular the
Course of Study, applying critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a methodological
tool in order to uncover gaps and contradictions between policy texts available
in English and in Japanese. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that TEFL
policy in Japan is not fundamentally about furthering the learning of English,
but instead functions to promote and shape the national language, Japanese.
Japanisation of English Language Education   177

The Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the 21st

Century
In January 2000, a report entitled “The frontier within: Individual empower-
ment and better governance in the new millennium” was published in both
Japanese and English by the Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in
the 21st Century (hereafter PMC, 2000). The Japanese attitude of self-­reliance
in overcoming adversity in the era of globalisation is reflected in the expression
“the frontier within”. In the report, the nation’s sense of self-­reliance is also
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extended to individual Japanese. The report’s English title is “The frontier

within: Individual empowerment and better governance in the new millen-
nium”, but the original Japanese title reads differently: “Japan’s frontier lies
within Japan: Building the new century with self-­reliance and cooperative gov-
ernance” (author’s translation). The official English version is misleading because
what the report actually proposes is cooperation between the nation and its
people, who have the strength born of self-­reliance in the new century, rather
than the empowerment of individuals who are disadvantaged by or excluded
from mainstream society. The section of the report entitled “Realising Japan’s
potential” describes this aspect of self-­reliance in the following terms:

Building a new system of governance, empowering the individual, and

creating a new public space require the fostering of a spirit of self-­
reliance. . . . The talent, drive, ethical mores, aesthetic sensibility, and
wisdom of self-­reliant individuals create the framework and dignity of a
nation. They shape the future. It is the spirit of self-­reliance that enables
individuals to release their latent strengths.
(PMC, 2000, Chapter 1, I. Realising Japan’s potential
[original English version])

“Spirit of self-­reliance” appears to refer to the efforts of people who can use
their own willpower to help themselves, which is parallel to the concept of “the
frontier within”, and English language ability is seen as one of the tools for
becoming a competent individual. Also known for its proposal to give English
the status of “second official language” in Japan, the report declares that TEFL
is not only an educational issue but a strategic imperative:

In the long term, it may be possible to make English an official second

language, but national debate will be needed. First, though, every effort
should be made to equip the population with a working knowledge of
English. This is not simply a matter of foreign-­language education. It
should be regarded as a strategic imperative.
(PMC, 2000, Chapter 1, IV. 1. (2) Enhancing global literacy
[original English version])
178   K. Hashimoto

The second sentence of the original Japanese reads differently. Its literal transla-
tion is: “First, every effort should be made to make English the citizens’ prac-
tical (or working) language” (author’s translation). The expression “working
knowledge of English” in the original English version indicates an emphasis on
knowledge of the language, rather than the actual use of the language. Even
though the idea of “English as a second official language” did not eventuate,
there remains ambiguity in Japanese society about what is important: knowledge
about the language or actual use of the language.
The “strategic imperative” materialised into a “Strategic Plan” in 2002
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(MEXT, 2002) and subsequently into the 2003 “Action Plan” (Monbukagaku-­
shô, 2003) to cultivate “Japanese with English abilities”, which included the intro-
duction of English in primary schools and a new curriculum for conducting senior
high school English classes in English. To fully examine Japan’s government
TEFL policies in these documents, Japan’s particular view of globalisation, the
assumed role of individual Japanese in nation-­building, and the particular Japanese
view of English in the era of globalisation must be taken into account.
One of the consequences of the close relationship between the nation and its
people promoted in the PMC report is the absence of a connection between
using English and any community in which the language is functioning. Par-
menter (2006) argues that the emphasis on the self-­awareness of learners as Japa-
nese persons in educational policies discourages any identity beyond the national
sphere. The acute sense of the inability of individuals to explain cultural and
historical matters about Japan when they are overseas is often highlighted
(Yomiuri Shimbun, 2010), rather than the inability to function in the community
where the language is spoken. The concern that Japanese people’s voices are not
heard internationally because of inadequate language skills is the ultimate reason
for the promotion of communicative ability in TEFL, according to the Ministry
of Education, Culture, Science, Sports and Technology (MEXT):

1. “English ability that Japanese people are expected to have in order to

live in the twenty-­first century”
. . . There have been situations where many Japanese are restricted in
international activities and interaction with foreigners, or not able to
receive proper respect because of their inadequate foreign language
abilities. This is why the improvement of communicative ability in
English, which is a so-­called common international language, is
urgently needed.
(Monbukagaku-­shô, 2001 [author’s translation])

This discourse of “Japanese voices to be heard” is behind the promotion of the

improvement of communicative ability; the follow-­up Strategic Plan for the
PMC report clearly expresses this imperative. I now turn to this “Strategic Plan”
and to the follow-­up “Action Plan”.
Japanisation of English Language Education   179

Improvement in Ability in the Japanese Language in the

Strategic and Action Plans to Cultivate “Japanese with English
Abilities”
The “strategic imperative” to promote an improvement in Japanese people’s
communicative ability in English was translated in 2002 into the “Strategic plan
to cultivate ‘Japanese with English abilities’: Plan to improve English and Japa-
nese abilities”. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Hashimoto, 2009), there is a
tension between the main title and the subtitle. The main title is about educat-
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ing Japanese people to master English, whereas the subtitle is about improving
both the English and Japanese language skills of Japanese people. In the Action
Plan (MEXT, 2003), however, the subtitle has been dropped, but the section
on “the improvement of Japanese language abilities” has been retained as one of
the initiatives “to improve English education”:

6. Improvement of Japanese language abilities

Goals: In order to cultivate communication abilities in English, the
ability to express appropriately and understand accurately the Japanese
language, which is the basis of all intellectual activities, will be
fostered.
(MEXT, 2003 [original English version])

In the English version, the term “Japanese” is used, but the term is “国語”, the
national language, in the Japanese original. It has been the practice to use differ-
ent terms for the Japanese language for Japanese citizens (国語) and for foreign-
ers (日本語), which has been seen as symbolic of the ownership of the language
(Miller, 1982). It is only recently that this practice has been relaxed somewhat.
The name change of the Society of Japanese Linguistics from 国語学会 to 日本
語学会 in 2004 is one example, but the Japanese name of the National Institute
for Japanese Language and Linguistics (国立国語研究所) remains unchanged.
The use of these terms by MEXT is rather complex: In the Course of Study,
the term “national language” is used as the title of academic subjects in the ori-
ginal Japanese version, but it is translated as “Japanese language” in the English
version. In the Course of Study for foreign languages, the term “Japanese lan-
guage” is used in both the original Japanese and the English versions. The
implications of these usages will be discussed later in this chapter.
In the Action Plan, the goal of improving Japanese language ability is further
explained as follows:

The acquisition of English is greatly related to students’ abilities in their

mother tongue, Japanese. It is necessary to foster in students the ability to
express appropriately and understand accurately the Japanese language and to
enhance communication abilities in Japanese in order to cultivate communication
180   K. Hashimoto

abilities in English. Also, in order to foster Japanese people rich in humanity

with an awareness of society, who will live as members of an international
society, it is important to enhance students’ thinking ability, foster students’
strength of expression and sense of language, deepen their interest in the Jap-
anese language and nurture an attitude of respect for the Japanese language.
(MEXT, 2003 [original English version; author’s emphasis])

The original Japanese reads differently in two respects: the first is the use of
“national” language instead of “Japanese” language, and the second relates to
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the term “communication”. In the phrase “to enhance communication abilities

in the national language”, a Japanese equivalent, 伝え合う, is used for “com-
munication”, whereas an English loanword is used in the phrase “to cultivate
communication abilities in English”. Loanwords function in many ways in con-
temporary Japanese society. Their obvious function is to indicate that an item is
foreign, although the item is often actually originally Japanese but inspired by a
foreign word (Seargeant, 2009; Stanlaw, 2004). The different application of the
loanword (コミュニケーション, komunikêshon) and the Japanese equivalent
in the Action Plan is noteworthy, as it suggests a particular sense of, or assump-
tion about, “communication” attached to language activities in English: that
they are a performance or something that is acted, rather than an extension of
the language activities conducted in daily life.
The use of the term “communication” as a loanword has another function in
the document. While the Japanese equivalent 伝え合う is a verb/adjective, and
therefore needs to be combined with another word such as “力”, ability, to
function as a noun, the loanword “communication” is always used as a noun; the
verb “communicate” is rarely used as a loanword. Fowler (1991) argues that
nominalisation and the use of nouns for action are endemic in bureaucratic and
formal modes of discourse, and readers therefore need to consider how much
information is unexpressed in such texts. Nominalisation is also associated with
the practice of labelling. According to Moncrieffe and Eyben (2007), labelling is
a common practice employed by policy makers and practitioners to formulate
solutions to perceived problems; but labelling can also obscure the diversity of
interpretations that is critical to addressing the very problems the label highlights.
In the case of “communication” in the document produced by MEXT, it is clear
that “communication” in English is promoted, but at the same time the way the
loanword is used serves to prevent further investigation of the matter. The fol-
lowing expressions in the text include the term “communication” as a loanword:

• cultivating basic/practical communication ability;

• English as a communication method;
• activities to conduct communication in English;
• ability to use English as for communication purposes;
• cultivating a positive attitude to communication;
Japanisation of English Language Education   181

• practical communication ability;

• the significance of obtaining communication ability in English.
(Author’s translation)

With this wide range of language activities in English labelled as “communica-

tion”, the actual content is assumed and categorised. Therefore, there is no
explanation of what “communication” entails, and, most importantly, it is not
questioned. For example, there is no statement in the document that acknowl-
edges any difficulties or problems in defining or assessing levels of content or
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student proficiency in English. In other words, the entire document is based on

the assumption that everybody agrees on the meaning of “English
communication”.
In the Action Plan, six measures for improving students’ Japanese language
abilities are listed; one of these relates to the revised Course of Study:

Realisation of the aims of the new Courses of Study

Regarding the Japanese language education in the new Courses of Study
implemented from 2002, the improvement of content has been achieved,
of course, by emphasising strongly literacy. In addition, emphasis has been
placed on nurturing the ability to express appropriately and understand
accurately the Japanese language in accordance with the purpose and situ-
ation for communication, and the person with whom one is speaking. The
enhancement of verbal “communication ability” while respecting other people’s
points of view and ways of thinking has been stressed.
(MEXT, 2003 [original English version; author’s emphasis])

Two aspects of this statement need attention. The first is the way the term
“communication” is used. In the original Japanese version, the term is omitted
in the phrase “in accordance with the purpose and situation for communica-
tion”, and “communication ability”, 伝え合う力, is the Japanese term. Second,
only the section of the document on improvement of national language ability
mentions the other party with whom the learners communicate: “the person
with whom one is speaking” and “respecting other people’s points of view and
ways of thinking”. The fifth measure for achieving the goal of improving stu-
dents’ Japanese abilities includes a similar expression:

Raising awareness of language

“A program to experience thinking about ‘language’ ” will be imple-
mented in an integrated manner in the home and community. This
program will offer an opportunity to think about such aspects as appropri-
ate word usage and verbal expressions appropriate to the situation and the
person one talks to as well as seeking to raise the awareness of language.
(MEXT, 2003 [original English version; author’s emphasis])
182   K. Hashimoto

While acknowledging other speakers and showing them consideration are

clearly mentioned in the section on improvement of national language ability,
there is only one sentence that refers to the “other party” in English communi-
cation. It comes in the section on the improvement of English classes:

To carry out such instruction effectively, it is important for teachers to

establish many situations where students can communicate with each other in
English and routinely to conduct classes principally in English. Through
such opportunities, learners can experience the fulfilment of expressing
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themselves and understanding others, and feel the joy of learning English.
(MEXT, 2003 [original English version; author’s emphasis])

The first highlighted phrase reads differently in the original Japanese version,
where the verb “communicate” is not used: “pupils and students conduct com-
munication in English”. The term “communication” is a loanword. The second
highlighted phrase has an emphasis on the joy brought by “understanding
others” rather than on the need to understand others in English communica-
tion. There is a similar expression in the section on “improving the teaching
ability of English teachers and upgrading the teaching system”, and it is in rela-
tion to “native speakers”:

[A] native speaker of English provides a valuable opportunity for students

to learn living English and familiarise themselves with foreign languages
and cultures. To have one’s English understood by a native speaker,
increases the students’ joy and motivation for English learning. In this
way, the use of a native speaker of English has great meaning.
(MEXT, 2003 [original English version; author’s emphasis])

In this context, “native speakers” are described as if they are useful tools or
resources to enhance enjoyment, and certainly not as equal partners to Japanese
students for communication purposes. There is a Japanese term for “native
speaker”, 母語話者, which literally means “mother tongue speaker”. While the
Japanese term does not specify the native language of the speaker, the loanword
usually means “native speakers of English”. Again, the loanword functions as
labelling and contributes to creating an assumption about native speakers of
English, dehumanising them in order to fit them in the framework of “English
communication”.
In sum, in the Action Plan, which is the foundation for the recent curricu-
lum changes in TEFL, the national language is defined as an indispensable
element of TEFL, and, most importantly, Japanese students are not expected to
conduct “English communication” in the same way that they communicate in
Japanese. Rather, “English communication” is constructed as something they
do with “native speakers” in order to bring joy to the learning of English. In
Japanisation of English Language Education   183

the next section, I examine this relationship between the national language and
English in the latest Course of Study.

The Revised Course of Study

In this section, I examine the Course of Study for the national language, fol-
lowed by the Course of Study for foreign languages and foreign language
activities.
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Course of Study for the National Language

The Course of Study was initially designed as reference resources to help teach-
ers to prepare teaching plans, but it has evolved into a legally binding docu-
ment, and school textbooks now need to be written to conform to the standards
set by the Course of Study (Horio, 1988). The Course of Study is divided into
separate volumes for each school subject, from primary school to senior high
school. The English versions (marked as provisional translations) of all subjects
taught in primary schools and junior high schools, and foreign-­language subjects
taught in senior high schools, are available on the MEXT homepage. The
Guidelines, which contain a more detailed explanation of the Course of Study,
are also published by MEXT but are only available in Japanese. When MEXT
revises the Course of Study, any changes are widely and extensively announced
three to four years prior to their full implementation in order to provide
schools, teachers, and textbook publishers with time for preparation. The latest
revision is the sixth since the end of World War II. In 2008, revisions for
primary and junior high schools were announced for 2011 implementation, and
in 2009, revisions for senior high schools were announced for 2013 implemen-
tation. In the Japanese education system, senior high school education is not
compulsory, but the recent initiative to extend the distribution of free textbooks
to senior high schools indicates that there is no significant distinction in terms of
the influence of the Course of Study.
Six items are listed in the Course of Study for improvement for primary
schools and junior high schools, and seven for senior high schools. They are
almost identical apart from the item relating to vocational training subjects for
senior high schools. They are: language activities, science education, education
on tradition and culture, moral education, experiential activities, and foreign
language activities. Thus, “language activities” and “foreign language activities”
are listed as separate items. The language activities for primary and junior high
schools are described as “improvement of learning about recording, explanation,
critique, statement and debate etc. in the national language and other subjects”.
Even though English (as a foreign language) has been strongly promoted, still as
an academic subject, its status in the Course of Study is marginal, as it is listed
last after experiential activities. Therefore, even though the latest revision of the
184   K. Hashimoto

Course of Study is known for the introduction of English in primary schools

and the requirement to conduct senior high school English classes in English, in
the broader framework these measures are counterbalanced by the emphasis on
the national language and education in tradition and culture.
MEXT provides comparison tables that show both the old and the revised
versions of the Course of Study. According to the table for the national lan-
guage in primary schools and junior high schools, one common item that has
been added to all grades/years is “traditional linguistic culture and characteristics
of the national language”. This item also appears in the revised Course of Study
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for the national language in senior high schools, with an additional statement
about the relationship between Japanese culture and foreign culture:

[Items related to traditional linguistic culture and characteristics of the

national language]

(1) Instructions should be given on the following items through instruc-

tion on “A: speaking/listening”, “B: writing” and “C: reading”:
a. Items related to traditional linguistic culture;
(a) To be aware of linguistic culture and the relationship between
the culture of our country and the culture of foreign countries,
and develop an interest in traditional linguistic culture.
(b) To understand the rules of classical texts and their reading.
(Monbukagaku-­shô, 2009, p. 26 [author’s translation and emphasis])

The original Japanese term for “our country” is 我が国, which was used as part
of the title of the White Papers (我が国の文教施策, Educational policies of our
country) by the Ministry of Education until 2000. The term is a written expres-
sion and seems somewhat old-­fashioned, with connotations of nationalism. The
term is also used in the section on syllabus design and teaching materials:

Teaching materials should be selected with due consideration of the fol-

lowing points:

8. To be instrumental in deepening interest in and understanding of the

traditions and culture of our country, and cultivating an attitude of
respect for them.
9. To be instrumental in deepening international understanding from a
broader perspective, having self-­awareness as Japanese persons, and
fostering a spirit of international cooperation.
(Monbukagaku-­shô, 2009, p. 27 [author’s translation and emphasis])

These items are the same in both the old and the revised versions. Exactly the
same wording is used in the Course of Study for the national language in junior
Japanisation of English Language Education   185

high schools, indicating that there is no difference in the expectations for junior
high school and senior high school students in terms of respect for Japanese tra-
ditions and culture. In other words, there is no expected educational variation
based on the students’ stage of development; rather, the Course of Study speci-
fies a single requirement for being a responsible Japanese citizen. Similar
descriptions appear in the Course of Study for the national language for primary
schools:

Teaching materials should be selected with due consideration to the fol-

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lowing points:

h. To be instrumental in developing an understanding and affection for

the tradition and culture of Japan [our country].
i. To be instrumental in developing an attitude to desire the develop-
ment of the nation and society with an awareness of [being] Japanese.
j. To be instrumental in cultivating the spirit of international coopera-
tion, with an understanding of the civilisation [climate] and cultures
of the world.
(MEXT, 2010a [original English version; author’s brackets])

The English version omits an important phrase that appears in the original Japa-
nese version of item i: “To be instrumental in cultivating a love for the country with
self-­awareness as a Japanese person and to wish for the development of the nation
and society” (author’s translation and emphasis). It is not clear why the expres-
sion “love for the country” is omitted from the English version. Compared to
the statements in the Course of Study for junior high and senior high schools,
those for primary schools seem to focus on the emotional development of stu-
dents. However, again the expectation for young children’s capacity for inter-
national cooperation or understanding of the cultures of the world does not
seem to be based on an assessment of their level of intellectual development.
The list of nouns such as “climate and culture of the world” and “the spirit of
international cooperation” functions to present assumed views. Therefore, it
appears that it is this public statement itself – with its implicit discourse of
nationalism – that is important, rather than the way the listed items are actually
delivered in the curriculum. In the next section, I examine how the elements of
“the national language” and “our country” are included in the Course of Study
for English subjects.

Course of Study for Foreign Languages and Foreign

Language Activities
The teaching of English in primary schools has been introduced in the form of
“foreign language activities” since 2011. There are two issues behind the
186   K. Hashimoto

naming of the subject: one is the focus on developing familiarity with “English
communication” rather than studying grammar and vocabulary; and the other is
that even though English is the de facto foreign language, technically it is just
one of the foreign languages to be taught in schools. As I have argued elsewhere
(Hashimoto, 2011), the shift in terminology from “English” to “foreign lan-
guages” and therefore to “foreign cultures” allows the inclusion of the Japanese
language and culture in the foreign language curriculum, because the notion of
“foreignness” is only meaningful when juxtaposed with Japan or “our country”.
From this perspective, it is not surprising that half of the content in the new
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Course of Study for foreign language activities in primary schools focuses on the
relationship between Japan and foreign countries:

Instructions should be given on the following items in order to deepen

the experiential understanding of the languages and cultures of Japan and
foreign countries:

(1) To become familiar with the sounds and rhythms of the foreign lan-
guage, to learn its differences from the Japanese language, and to be
aware of the interesting aspects of language and its richness.
(2) To learn the differences in ways of living, customs and events between
Japan and foreign countries and to be aware of various points of view
and ways of thinking.
(3) To experience communication with people of different cultures and to
deepen the understanding of culture.
(MEXT, 2009 [original English version; author’s emphasis])

In the English version, foreign countries and cultures are presented in plural
form, but this is not the case in the original Japanese because Japanese nouns do
not indicate whether they are singular or plural. The Course of Study sets up a
dichotomy of Japan versus foreign country(ies) or Japanese culture versus
foreign culture(s) without identifying which foreign country and which culture
is being referred to. By generalising all target languages and cultures, rather than
specifying “English” and “English culture”, only the “differences” between Jap-
anese and (all) foreign languages and cultures are highlighted. Such dichotomies
focus attention on Japan and the Japanese language at least as much as on foreign
languages and cultures.
As mentioned earlier, in the Course of Study for foreign languages, the term
“Japanese” rather than “the national language” is used, but the practice does not
appear to be consistent. There is one section in which the terms “the national
language” and “our country” are used:

(1) Consideration should be given to the following points when giving

instructions over the period of two years:
Japanisation of English Language Education   187

D.  Teachers should enable pupils to deepen their understanding not

only of the foreign language and culture, but also of the Japanese
[national] language and culture [of our country] through foreign
language activities.
(MEXT, 2009 [original English version; author’s brackets])

In the Course of Study for foreign languages in junior high schools, teaching
materials must be about both foreign countries and Japan:
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Teachers should take up a variety of suitable topics in accordance with

the level of students’ development, as well as their interest, covering
topics that relate to issues like the daily lives, manners and customs,
stories, geography, history, traditional cultures and natural science of the
people of the world, focusing on English-­speaking people and the Japa-
nese people. Consideration should be given to the following perspectives: 

B. Materials should be useful in deepening the understanding of the

ways of life and cultures of foreign countries and Japan, raising inter-
est in language and culture and developing respectful attitudes toward
these.
C. Materials should be useful in deepening the international understand-
ing from a broad perspective, heightening students’ awareness of
being Japanese citizens in a global community and cultivating a spirit
of international cooperation.
(MEXT, 2010b [original English version])

In fact, the original Japanese for the last two items relating to teaching materials
for foreign language study is exactly the same as in the statement used in the
Course of Study for the national language in junior high and senior high
schools. Ultimately, as the Action Plan declared, the purpose of promoting
TEFL is to create Japanese citizens who live in the international community
with a self-­awareness of themselves as Japanese.

Conclusion
The Action Plan to “cultivate Japanese with English abilities”, which repre-
sented a major reform of TEFL for the new century, from the outset had the
agenda of incorporating the importance of Japanese language and culture; the
discourse of the Plan suggests that the ultimate purpose of equipping Japanese
youth with English language skills was to make them able to voice Japanese
views to the rest of the world. Using the Course of Study as a powerful vehicle
for implementing its agenda, MEXT has shaped “communication in English”,
which differs from “communication in the national language”. In TEFL in
188   K. Hashimoto

Japan, “communication in English” is something Japanese people “conduct”,

and such communication is one-­way: only Japanese people are important, and
“native speakers” are useful only to test learning outcomes and help Japanese
feel personal satisfaction. The use of English is represented in policy documents
largely without context, detached from place or from actual human interaction.
Ironically, it has been reported that the Course of Study may have contributed
to a growing resentment of “communication in English”. As if to coincide with
the announcement of the revision of the Course of Study, in 2008 a major pub-
lisher issued reprinted editions of three classic English grammar-­translation refer-
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ence books, in order to respond to public nostalgia for the old tradition of more
“serious” study of English. Since typical grammar-­translation reference books are
about what to learn rather than how to learn the target language (Cook, 2010), the
boom in reprints of such reference books indicates a key feature of learning a
foreign language for Japanese people: a desire for knowledge gained from texts in
their own language. There is not enough space here to discuss Japan’s translation
culture and foreign language learning, but the indispensable function of the
national language in learning foreign languages has been well documented (Inami,
2000; Sakai, 1997). If translation is a process of “Japanising” foreign information,
it would be worthwhile to revisit the move away from the traditional grammar-­
translation method (which was one aim of the Action Plan). In any event, careful
analysis of the major government language policy documents reveals that TEFL
policy in Japan cannot be considered a straightforward effort to promote English
language learning in Japanese public schools. Instead, TEFL policy has “Japanised”
communication in English in the education system by placing the national lan-
guage in the central position throughout the Course of Study.

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10
INDIA’S ECONOMIC
RESTRUCTURING WITH ENGLISH

Benefits versus Costs

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E. Annamalai

In the last decade of the 20th century, India’s pursuit of a free-­market economy
led to changes in its language policies in education. These changes have been
aimed at enhancing the skills of India’s citizens through education that is
adapted to the needs of the market economy. The key to skill enhancement is
English, which is needed for communication in business environments and for
accessing knowledge usable in the new economy. National integration, the
staple of education policy in most postcolonial countries, is predicated on
market integration within India and with the world. English is taken to be
indispensable for this integration.
Popular perception is that English is crucial to the material lives of the
people, owing to the importance of English in the competitive market
economy. This perception, fueled by the promise of instant reward through
English, has made it easy for the government to compromise on its previously
stated policy of replacing English with Indian languages in all domains, includ-
ing education. As in the economy, the commanding role of the government in
education is being turned over to the market, which finds the product of
English easy to sell for profit as well as for creating the labor force it needs.
The seeming convergence of the interests of the people, the government,
and the market, however, hides the falsity of the promise of English. In fact, the
scarcity of human resources to teach English from the beginning of the educa-
tional process and the absence of suitable pedagogy for the multiple backgrounds
and needs of the learners of English are evidence of the falsity of this promise.
The results of the new language policy in education are sidetracking of the
public policy commitment to cultural plurality and enrichment predicated on
Indian languages, the need for a variable curriculum and pedagogy for teaching
English, and shortchanging of the hopes of millions of first-­generation learners,
192   E. Annamalai

who have no realistic chance of accessing high-­quality education through

English. This chapter presents the hidden social cost of the spread of English-­
medium education in India.

The Plurality of Policy

A policy can be defined as a set of principles based on an ideology that guides a
pattern of behavior to achieve a goal. It should include an object that is the
target of behavior and a domain for the behavior to achieve the specified goal.
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In policy formulated to affect language choice in the domain of education, goals

include language-­related issues such as language development and enhancement
of language status (or the reverse) as well as political concerns (Tollefson, 2002)
such as nation formation, conflict avoidance, governance, effective communica-
tion, and economic development. In addition to language policy in education
formulated by the state through its institutions, language policy is also made by
other agents, especially the community and the individual (Annamalai, 2001).
They too have goals to be realized through language, and preferences for
language(s) to be learned and used in educational institutions. Some of their
goals may overlap with the language policy goals of the state, whereas others
may be specific to them alone, including political and cultural identities of com-
munities and individuals. Hence, the study of language policy should be plural,
to include the relationship between policies at these three levels, especially
whether they are conflicting or harmonious, and their relative power and influ-
ence. The interactions among levels may bring changes at each of the three
levels, including changes in the behavior of the community and the individual,
and changes in policies formulated by the state. Thus, policymaking is a
dynamic process of interaction among the three levels.
The language policy of the community and the individual is described in
sociolinguistic literature as “language behavior.” This terminology is motivated
by the fact that the principles guiding community and individual language
choice are related to language behavior directly; the community or the indi-
vidual making the policy and behaving in the real world are one and the same
(though they might be circumscribed by the policies of the state). The state’s
principles of language choice, on the other hand, relate to its citizens remotely
in the sense that state policy is open to acceptance, modification, or rejection by
the citizens. Moreover, the policy of the state has a cumulative effect only when
communities or individual citizens adopt the linguistic behavior intended by the
policy.
Language policy is conceptually and empirically plural in another sense also:
it is dependent on the cultural, social, political, economic, and historical context
of the nation and its people. Nor is policy static within a nation. The relation-
ship between the policy and its context is cyclic, as policy itself may bring
changes in the context (e.g., changes in the rights of communities and
India’s Economic Restructuring with English   193

i­ndividuals), which may in turn force changes in the policy. Language policy-
making in education is thus an interactive, context-­dependent, and dynamic
process, in both democratic and authoritarian states, all of which undergo policy
modifications over time.

Ambivalence in Language Policy

Since the creation of its new Constitution in 1950, India has been marked by
“linguistic secularism,” meaning that one language is not anointed as the sole
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national language, and by “linguistic liberalism,” which refers especially to the

maintenance in elementary education of large and small minority languages.
India’s language policy in education, however, has an inherent ambivalence:
The policy has been constrained by the economic policy of development,
which was predicated on science and technology imported from industrialized
countries, and on training a class of its citizens in these knowledge areas through
higher education. For decades, implementation of this economic policy was
through centralized planning and a bureaucratic structure to sustain it. Thus, the
language of higher education, which produced the technologists and bureaucrats
required by the policy of economic development, continued to be English, as in
the colonial period. This practice has had a crucial effect on the constitutionally
mandated Indian language choice in education: it creates a fundamental division
between those who attend higher education and those who leave school in ele-
mentary or secondary levels. The former group demanded the choice of English
in elementary and secondary schools in order to facilitate entry into college,
whereas the latter group chose an Indian language as medium of instruction (a
de facto, not de jure, result). The early policy recommendation that students not
attending higher education would choose vocational education did not gain
popular acceptance among people who aspired to join the middle class. Instead,
the need to learn English in order to be successful in English-­medium higher
education was transformed into popular insistence on English as the instruc-
tional medium for all students. This situation led to the formation of two sets of
schools, distinguished by the medium of instruction, which has contributed to
reproducing inequality in material benefits that accrue from the two kinds of
education. Such a result of language policy in education is not uncommon.
Tollefson (1991) notes: “Though states may fund language programmes and
proclaim the importance of language learning, they simultaneously create con-
ditions which make it virtually impossible for some citizens to acquire the lan-
guage competence they need” (p. 202). In India, the state policy of encouraging
the use of English as the medium of instruction to improve proficiency in that
language on a universal scale has meant in reality that many citizens will never
gain the language competence they need.
194   E. Annamalai

Response to the Ambivalence in Language Policy

Since the 1950s, government policy has been to use regional Indian languages as
media of instruction in public schools at the level of the individual states, but
the policy of using English in higher education continued without a gradual
change to regional Indian languages as media of instruction, as the policy rec-
ommended. An important result has been the rise of new private schools, some
run by Hindu religious bodies in addition to the existing Christian missionary
schools, which are not bound by the government’s language policy for school
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education. A large majority of these private schools have chosen English as the
medium of instruction. These schools are patronized by the upwardly mobile
middle class, who abandoned the public schools, leaving them to bear the stigma
that they are for economically and scholastically limited children. This develop-
ment gave rise to the belief in the general population, including the rural and
urban poor, that good education means education through English, and that it
is such education which leads to white-­collar jobs.
Thus, the communities’ language policy eventually favored a central role for
English in education, which eventually had an impact on the state’s policy of
language in education. In response to the communities’ and individuals’ prefer-
ences in language choice in education, the states modified their language policy
in various ways, such as allowing parallel streams of Indian-­language and
English-­medium classes, lowering the grade from which English is taught as a
language,1 and closing public schools for want of students or resources, thereby
leaving education to private schools unaffordable by the poor. Moreover,
despite parents’ great financial sacrifice in their efforts to give their children an
English education, many of their children suffer educational failure.

Conflicted Policy
The underlying principle followed by the state regarding creation of new know-
ledge among its citizens is that knowledge will be imported from, or locally
created in, English and then translated into the Indian languages. This principle
created an unequal hierarchy of knowledge generators and knowledge consum-
ers, distinguished by one’s competence in language. This strategy to create a
class of elites based on knowledge of English is a continuation of the colonial
policy of giving what was called “useful” (i.e., European) knowledge to the
population through English. Because of the great financial and political cost of
universal transmission of knowledge, colonial policy was to provide English
education to a few (mostly from the upper castes), who would transmit it to
others using mother tongues (Annamalai, 2003).
There is, however, a crucial difference between this colonial policy of down-
ward filtering of knowledge and the policy of the current democratic state of
India. The latter’s policy of acquiring knowledge through English in education
India’s Economic Restructuring with English   195

is in principle open to every school-­goer; this principle means that the students
(or parents) are blamed for school failure even if school knowledge can only be
acquired through a language that is not part of children’s experience outside
school. The false choice of medium of education (in contrast with learning
English competently as a language) becomes a trap for the socioeconomically
deprived segments of the population, especially those whose children are first-­
generation learners. Thus, the language choice made by communities and indi-
viduals, aided by the hidden policy of the state in other domains and the
ambivalent policy in higher education, is increasingly for English.
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Although this choice is made to improve children’s competitiveness in the

employment market, in reality it is counterproductive to their aspirations. Spe-
cifically, the policy does not meet its stated goal of gainful employment for all
because of widespread school failure. In fact, 53% of all students drop out of
school before completing elementary education, even though elementary edu-
cation is mandated for all children by the Constitution. Of those remaining in
school, 14% do not continue to secondary education; among those who do
continue to secondary education, half do not successfully complete the school
education of 10 years that qualifies them for higher education (NCERT,
2005e). The current policy of strengthening higher education has set the goal of
more than doubling enrollment in five years, from 7% to 15% among young
people aged 18–24 years (Government of India, 2007).2 The mismatch between
this goal of higher education and the high dropout rate will seriously compro-
mise the goal of broadening the base of higher education in the population.
Although the expansion of higher education, with more institutions of excel-
lence, is the policy goal, higher education will continue to be exclusive, without
improvement in the high school performance of the majority of the children.

Policy Reformulations
The state policy about medium of instruction has continued, in spite of the
reformulation of the language policy from time to time since the country’s
independence. Motivated by changing factors at national and global levels, early
policies as recommended by educational commissions set up soon after inde-
pendence, including the Mudaliyar Commission of 1952–1953 and the Kothari
Commission of 1964–1966 (for their reports, see Biswas & Agrawal, 1986)
spelled out two goals: personal development and national development. These
goals were intended to produce citizens with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes
that would contribute to the economic and political well-­being of the country,
while ensuring the material progress and the moral foundations of individuals.
The language policy in education was meant to make education accessible
through the mother tongue or the regional language and to maintain the multi-
lingual nature of the society. The use of Indian-­language media of instruction
was prevalent in the colonial period also, but the new emphasis was on making
196   E. Annamalai

the vernacularization of education universal, which would be immediately

achieved in secondary education and gradually achieved in higher education.
There were, however, some exceptions made, which proved to be openings for
the entry of English-­medium advocates (Annamalai, 2003). The assumption
underlying this policy of vernacularization of school education was that the role
of English in education would be transitional, eventually yielding its place to
Indian languages. The role envisaged for English in education in independent
India, as specifically mentioned by the Kothari Commission, was that it would
be taught as a library language for accessing the knowledge available in it.
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The National Policy on Education was formulated in 1968 (adopted in 1986

and in 1992 without modification in regard to language), based on the recom-
mendations of the Education Commissions and other bodies such as the Central
Advisory Board of Education. The language policy in education is virtually the
same as the recommendations of the Mudaliyar and Kothari Commissions with
regard to its rationale and specifications. The rationale is spelled out in the
National Policy on Education (Government of India, 1968):

The energetic development of Indian languages and literature is sine qua

non for educational and cultural development. Unless this is done, the
creative energies of the people will not be released, standards of education
will not improve, knowledge will not spread to the people, the gap
between the intelligentsia will remain, if not widen further.
(p. 39)

The specifications point out that the medium of instruction in school education
will be Indian languages (with some exceptions), and three languages will be
learned: the mother tongue or the regional language (i.e., each state’s official
language), Hindi for students for whom it is not the mother tongue (or another
modern Indian language, preferably from south India, for Hindi speakers), and
English (i.e., Hindi and English, which are the two specified official languages
of the Union). This part of the policy, endorsed by the chief ministers of the
states, is known as the Three Language Formula.
Because the use of different media of instruction in school education and
higher education would hinder reaching the goals of creativity, quality, equity,
and mobility, the national policy states that “the regional languages are already
in use as medium of education at the primary and secondary stages. Urgent steps
should now be taken to adopt them as media of education at the University
stage” (Government of India, 1968, p. 40). The urgency of this step, which has
been advocated from the time of the earliest policy formulation, has lost its force
in the new economic context. Problems include the choice between the mother
tongue and the regional language (when they are different) and the absence of
instrumental motivation for Hindi-­speaking students to seriously learn another
modern Indian language (Aggarwal, 1992). This inherent weakness in the policy
India’s Economic Restructuring with English   197

of teaching three languages is left in practice to be resolved by individuals and

communities.

Policy Shift
The Kothari Commission recommended that English would be a library lan-
guage, used to gain knowledge from outside India, as mentioned above. A
significant departure from this recommendation is the learning of English for
active competence and use. The reason for this development is a change in the
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political climate. The Constitution mandated that Hindi would replace English
as the official language of the Union in 1965 (i.e., 15 years after the Constitu-
tion was adopted). There were prolonged violent protests, especially in the
South, against ending the transitory phase of English. In response, the Official
Languages Act of 1963, which was passed to implement the Constitutional
mandate, was amended in 1967 for the continuation of English as the associate
official language of the Union. By this Act, the monolingual policy of language
in administration (colonial English to be replaced by Hindi) became a bilingual
policy more broadly. The role of English in India officially changed: it was now
to be an active language in government and consequently in the society. English
also became politically significant as a proxy for political mobilization against
the dominance of Hindi.
The National Policy on Education (Government of India, 1986) prescribes
universal access to elementary education: “It shall be ensured that free and com-
pulsory education of satisfactory quality is provided to all children up to 14 years
of age before we enter the twenty first century.” This reiteration of the consti-
tutional directive to the state for universal education extended the target date
from 1960 to 2000. The Constitution itself was amended in 2002 (after missing
the target date for universal access to elementary education) to make education
a fundamental right of children, thereby changing it from an “obligation of the
State,” as originally formulated in the Constitution. This amendment was given
life by the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act in 2009,
commonly referred to as the Right to Education Act (Government of India,
2009). As a result of implementing the educational policy objective of elemen-
tary education for all, enrollment to begin schooling is now near-­universal, but
many children do not complete eight years of education.
The near-­universal enrollment3 is a result of the national drive by the
program of Universal Elementary Education (UEE). Among other things, this
program increased the physical access to school. As of 2002, 87% of the habita-
tions have a primary school within a radius of 1 kilometer, and 78% have an
upper primary school that would permit completion of eight years of education
within a radius of 3 kilometers (NCERT, 2005a, figure 1). The number of stu-
dents who stay through eight years of school has increased relatively. In 2002,
the enrollment in class 1 was 32 million students, which shrank to 14 million in
198   E. Annamalai

class 8 (NCERT, 2005b). The retention rate was 44%, assuming the same set of
students in the beginning and at the end of elementary education, 12% higher
than the retention in 1986, as reported in the Fifth All India Educational
Survey, which listed enrollment figures of 24.9 million in class 1 and 7.9 million
in class 8 (NCERT, 1992, volume 2, table 167).4
In addition to the government drive for universal education, changes in
retention rates indicate a policy shift among parents. Communities whose
parents stayed away for generations from the tradition of schooling have in
recent years come to believe in investing in their children’s time in school.
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With the expanding middle class, education offers dividends in the new market-­
driven economy. The sociopolitical changes in the past half-­century, including
the government’s policy of positive discrimination in favor of the “backward
castes” by reserving seats in higher and professional education, have increased
the possibility of upward mobility. These parents perceive, again from the
example of the middle class, that English is the key to this mobility, that the
purpose of education is to acquire proficiency in English, and that English as
the medium of instruction in schools is the key to that proficiency.

Policy Paradox
Current policy does not offer a viable solution to the challenge of the special
needs of first-­generation learners, for whom English is a foreign language not
reinforced outside the classroom, and to the challenge of mass education in
English from primary school, where teachers have a minimal command of
English and cannot serve as models for grammar and pronunciation. In addition,
these teachers do not have training in second language teaching. On these prag-
matic grounds, there is a real danger of failure of the policies of English-­medium
education and universal elementary education for all, irrespective of students’
economic, social, and educational backgrounds. The belief continues among
policymakers at all levels, however, that education to develop proficiency in
English is the only means to quality education for all. The paradox is that the
policy to globalize economic opportunities (through English education) under-
mines the policy to universalize educational opportunities. The question is
whether the cost – the continued lack of quality education for the lowest eco-
nomic classes in the language of their childhood experience – is worth the
benefit of globalized economic opportunity for the middle class. Because of
widespread educational failure, the paradox is unlikely to be resolved by the
claim that the free-­market economy will bring everyone into the middle class.

Economic Motivation for Educational Language Policy

A major shift in economic policy took place in the 1990s when India, in the
midst of a balance of payments crisis, embraced a market economy under
India’s Economic Restructuring with English   199

p­ ressure from the International Monetary Fund. The state began to yield to the
globalized market its commanding role in the economy. The resulting process
of economic restructuring is closely associated with English, the language of the
globalized market and of information and communication technology, on
which the globalized economy depends. This economic basis for the promotion
of English means that the role of education increasingly is to aid the country’s
integration with the global market, which sidelines its role in aiding citizens’
cultural integration with the nation. Producing knowledge workers for com-
panies becomes the priority in education, rather than producing knowledgeable
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citizens of the nation.

A comparison of the National Curriculum Framework of the National
Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT, 2005e) with the
Recommendations on School Education by the National Knowledge Commis-
sion (Government of India, 2007) reveals the tension between policies that are
educationally driven and those that are economically driven. The documents
express agreement, dictated by political ideology as well as political pragmatism,
about preserving the multilingual nature of the country, of which English is a
part. The difference is about the place of English in the multilingualism of indi-
viduals, the community, and the country.
In its section on language, the National Curriculum Framework states:

English does not stand alone. The aim of English teaching is the creation
of multilinguals, who can enrich all our languages; this has been an
abiding national vision. English needs to find its place along with other
Indian languages in different states, where children’s other languages
strengthen English teaching and learning.
(NCERT, 2005e, p. 39)

With this aim, the policy places English in the educational context as one of the
three languages whose pedagogies mutually reinforce the learning of all
languages.
In contrast, the National Knowledge Commission (Government of India,
2007, p. 47) gives importance to language as the “determinant of access” over
anything else, such as a means of experiencing the world, a vehicle of culture, a
marker of personal identity, a symbol of national solidarity, and such non-­
economic indices. That is, “language as tool of communication” is narrowed to
“communication for economic success,” sidelining communication for com-
munal cohesion and solidarity. The value of English for higher education and
high-­paying jobs is the entry point for the Commission to promote the policy
of teaching English early in school and in wide areas of content such as science
and mathematics beyond the traditional sites of language teaching such as
writing, literature, and practical transactions. This policy means using English to
teach selected non-­language subjects in order to learn English. The pedagogical
200   E. Annamalai

rationale (apart from the political rationale that this is demanded by parents) for
“language across the curriculum” is the claim that a language is learned not only
in the language class but in other subject classes as well. The Commission
recommends that

the teaching of English as a language should be introduced, along with

the first language (either the mother-­tongue or the regional language)
of  the child, starting from Class I. . . . Language learning cannot be
separated from, and must be integrated with, content learning. Therefore,
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English should also be used to teach some non-­language subjects, starting

from class III in school.
(p. 27)

The Commission claims that this policy will help build “an inclusive society and
transform India into a knowledge society” (p. 27). Although many other factors
beyond language affect economic participation by citizens, the assumption of
this policy is that anyone can become a participant in the knowledge economy
and that English education will remove any barrier to their doing so.
Teaching English has always been an important part of language policy in
education in India for historical, political, and economic reasons, but the uni-
versal role of English in education today is new. There are about 900,000
schools, including primary and upper primary schools (classes from 1 to 4 or 5
and from 5 or 6 to 8) that provide the mandated elementary education.5 The
number of students in classes 1 to 8 is about 169 million. The number of teach-
ers (excluding para-­teachers) in these schools (including single-­teacher schools)
who need training in the English language and its pedagogy is about 3.5 million
(NCERT, 2005a). Even partial failure in training teachers will undermine the
policy and will disproportionally affect the education of students from socioeco-
nomically deprived backgrounds. One consequence of the magnitude of the
task of English education for a diverse student population is the risk of the social
cost of educational failure and underachievement, even if the material and
human resources the policy requires are found.

English and Quality Education

The policy recommended by the National Knowledge Commission is basically
to adopt for the public schools the practice in private schools, which teach
English from class 1 and use it as the medium of instruction. Of all the elemen-
tary schools in the country, 80.4% are run by government at all levels, from the
federal government to the panchayat (village council)6 (NUEPA, 2011). In addi-
tion, other schools that are aided financially by the government are required by
law to follow the official language policy. There has been some increase in the
number of primary and upper primary schools that do not use English as the
India’s Economic Restructuring with English   201

medium of instruction. In 2002, schools that taught through the medium of the
regional language or the mother tongue were 92.1% at the primary level
(NCERT, 2005b) (compared to 91.7% in 1993 [NCERT, 1992]) and 91.3% at
the upper primary level (compared to 88.6% in 1993). There was no appreciable
difference in this increase between schools in rural and urban areas. In 2002,
92.4% were in the regional language or the mother tongue in rural primary
schools (compared to 91.7% in 1993) and 90.4% in urban primary schools
(compared to 91.3% in 1993); 92.7% in rural upper-­primary schools (compared
to 89.5% in 1993) and 87.4% in urban upper-­primary schools (compared to
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86.1% in 1993) (NCERT, 2005c).

These figures, however, do not mean that instruction through the medium
of English is on the decrease. English was the medium of instruction in 13.0%
of primary schools and in 18.3% of upper-­primary schools in 2002. The corre-
sponding figures in the sixth educational survey of 1993 were 5.0% and 15.9%
respectively. (Totals do not tally to 100%, because there are schools that have
separate sections of the same class with different media of instruction, and there
are schools that teach through an Indian-­language medium which is not the
home language of the students but instead a second language such as Hindi.)
Moreover, the increase in the proportion of schools that use the medium of
English is greater at higher levels of education. English-­medium schools in 2002
made up 25.8% of the total (18.4% in 1993) at the secondary stage (classes 9 and
10) and 33.6% (28.1% in 1993) at the higher secondary stage (classes 11 and 12)
(also called junior college) (NCERT, 2005c).
There are several reasons for the apparent contradiction in the increase in
both English-­medium and Indian-­language-medium schools. While govern-
ment opens new schools with mother-­tongue medium as part of its drive to
provide universal access to elementary education, it also allows schools to open
parallel classes with English as the medium, reflecting the emerging policy shift.
Government-­aided schools often win government approval for English-­medium
education through interventions of the court.7 Also, self-­financing private
schools with English as the medium opened in increasing numbers during this
period, which further accelerated in the second decade of economic restructur-
ing. While the national statistics from the next educational survey are awaited,
the report from the state of Tamil Nadu shows that the number of students
enrolled in Matriculation schools, which are privately run outside the State
Board of Education and teach through English, increased to 2.31 million in
2008 from 1.75 million in 2004, an increase of 32% in four years (cited in Ram-
alingam, 2009). In the state of Karnataka, enrollment in government schools fell
to 5.5 million in 2011 from 6.3 million in 2006, while enrollment in private
schools increased to 2.9 million in 2011 from 2.3 million in 2006, an increase of
26% in five years (Government of Karnataka, 2011). In four other states, 17.6%
of children in the age group of 7 to 16 years attended private schools in 2006,
which represents a 5% increase from the previous year (Pratham, 2007).
202   E. Annamalai

Although the pace of the shift is different in different states, it can be safely
assumed that the national average of English-­medium students in schools stands
at present at around 20%, and that this percentage is growing at the rate of 5%
every year.
In spite of the accelerated increase in English-­medium schools, an over-
whelming number of schools continue to teach students through the medium
of their home language. Yet the new policy of the state and individuals aims to
change this. This means that the shift in the policy in the name of quality edu-
cation will bring the majority of schools that train students from low-­income
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families in line with the educational practice of schools that historically cater to
the educational needs of students from middle- and upper-­income families.
A study of top English-­medium private schools in metropolitan cities in
India, however, finds that the students perform below international standards,
learning English by rote with deficient comprehension and writing English with
few originally composed sentences (Educational Initiatives & Wipro, 2006).
This finding suggests that English-­medium education does not necessarily
produce students who are competitive in the global market. The situation in
Indian-­language-medium public schools is actually worse. Half of the children
in government schools cannot read or write or do basic arithmetic even after
four or five years in school (Pratham, 2007). Thus, what is needed is pedagogi-
cal reform, rather than a change in medium of instruction. Although pedagogi-
cal reform has been part of all policy recommendations (Government of India,
1993), pedagogy continues to be dominated by preparation for the final exami-
nation, which is the main determiner of college admission and therefore the
main concern for middle-­class parents desiring to give a competitive advantage
to their children.
Thus, in spite of the lack of improvement in learning in English-­medium
education, enrollment in private schools is on the increase, while enrollment in
public schools is declining in the second decade of economic restructuring. The
crux of the problem is that the stated policy of expansion of education to all is
equated with the expansion of English education to all, with unknown results.
This initiative is based on the belief that the historical association of English
with social and economic inequality can be undone by the democratization of
education through English. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that this goal is
achievable.

English in Economic Growth

There is no study correlating the quantitative increase in English education with
an increase in gross domestic product. The share of the service industry in GDP
reached 52% in 2003, with 28% of workers employed in this sector (Verma,
2008). This industry includes information technology services and financial
services, which require different and specific English skills. Other services such
India’s Economic Restructuring with English   203

as hospitality, travel, and tourism require English skills for communication in

some jobs. The remaining 72% of employment is in manufacturing, trade, con-
struction, weaving, crafts, and agriculture, which need lower-­level English skills
or none at all.
The nature of economic growth after economic restructuring and the con-
comitant increase in non-­manual jobs outside the government demands increas-
ing English skills. In the competition among emerging economies to increase
their share of economic growth, many political and economic analysts highlight
the competitive advantage of the colonial legacy of English in India, where
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English is a second language rather than a foreign language to the middle class.
In the compelling comparison with China, the concern is that losing the advant-
age of English will hurt India’s competition as a nation. A recent report by the
British Council on the future of English in India has this to say as one of its
main conclusions:

The rate of improvement in the English-­language skills of the Indian

population is at present too slow to prevent India from falling behind
other countries which have implemented the teaching of English in
primary schools sooner, and more successfully. China may already have
more people who speak English than India.
(Graddol, 2010, p. 14)

Such fears feed the frenzy for English in education at the state policy level and
justify the thinking behind the policy that the next step in the path of economic
restructuring is widening and upgrading the English skills of the citizens.
The claim implicit in current policy is not just that English is the language of
access to information and knowledge in academic environments, but that it is
also the language of communication in business environments. English is not
merely a window to the world, but also the door that opens to it. The eco-
nomic reality of the global market, however, blinds policymakers to certain
basic truths about language pedagogy. The focus group on teaching English,
which was one of the groups whose deliberations provided the content of the
National Curricular Framework, made the case for an integrated pedagogy of
the three languages taught in schools. This proposal was based on the fact that
some language skills can be transferred effectively from one language to another
(NCERT, 2005d, section 4 of volume 1). The focus group pointed out that
reading is one such skill and that the natural direction of the transfer is from the
home language to the second language. Communication is also a generalized
skill that can be transferred from an Indian language learned as the first language
to English learned as a second language. Yet the policy recommended by the
Knowledge Commission does not take cognizance of this argument. The focus
group on Indian languages (NCERT, 2005d, section 3 of volume 1) emphas-
ized the importance of education for fostering multilingualism and recognized
204   E. Annamalai

the rights of minority communities to choose to learn their mother tongue in

school. The Knowledge Commission acknowledged the indispensability of
multilingualism in India, but relegated the goal of achieving multilingual com-
petence to the will of the communities and individual schools, with no pro-
grammatic path laid down in official policy.
Moreover, to have the same policy of teaching English to students who
come from families exposed to it for two or more generations and to students
who are first-­generation learners works against the interests of the latter.
Though there are no empirical data, it is likely, from the observations of non-­
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governmental organizations working in the field of education, that the majority

of students who fail in English (and mathematics) in the school final examina-
tion at the end of ten years and so do not qualify to enter college are first-­
generation learners. Among the first-­generation students who pass and are not
discouraged from entering college by the use of English as medium of instruc-
tion in higher education, many have difficulty in completing college because of
their poor command of English. Those who complete college often fail in job
recruitment because of poor English and communication skills. Indeed, the
corporate world constantly complains that the labor pool with these skills is
shrinking, undermining India’s “natural” advantage of the ability to communic-
ate in English, despite an increase in the number of students obtaining college
education.

The Social Cost of Language Policy

The failure of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds at different
points in their educational career is a huge social cost. The result is increased
economic disparity and the threat of social unrest. Gender inequality also
increases since parents unable to bear the high cost of education through English
tend to restrict that education to sons alone (Ramalingam, 2009). To protect
their investment in education, many parents send their children to private classes
in English, which often are ill-­equipped for the task and charge a heavy fee. Yet
demand sustains this spurious supply of low-­quality English teaching, producing
additional disappointment for poor students.
The challenge before policymakers is to ensure that enhancing opportunities
for learning English through the educational system does not end up expanding
the existing gaps in English proficiency. In other words, the challenge is to
prevent the goal of equal access to economic opportunities through English
from producing unequal educational outcomes with regard to English. If this
challenge is not met squarely, there is a danger of blaming the people at the
bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy for not availing themselves of the newly
opening economic opportunities, owing to their inability to learn English well.
Inequality will thus be rationalized, if not justified. This danger lurks large in
privatized education managed like a commercial enterprise available to those
India’s Economic Restructuring with English   205

who can afford it. This change in the management of education and the failure
to provide quality education for the masses suggest that educational restructur-
ing is the next logical step of economic restructuring. As the new economy has
accentuated income inequality while increasing the size of the middle class in
India, the new education may perpetuate the inequality of educational out-
comes even as it increases the educational coverage of the population.

NOTES
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1 Official data show that 87.5% of schools begin teaching English as a language from a
class at the primary level of education, while 91.5% of the schools at this level teach
two or more languages (NCERT, 2005c).
2 The National Knowledge Commission (Government of India, 2008, p. 54) proposes a
target of 1,500 university-­level institutions in five years (against the existing 544 such
institutions in 2010; there are, in addition, 31,324 colleges). This goal is to be achieved
by government opening new institutions, granting university status to selected existing
institutions, upgrading promising colleges to university status, encouraging the private
sector to start such institutions, and allowing foreign universities to open campuses in
India.
3 In 2002, the number of children in the age group 6–11 was 132 million (NCERT,
2005a, table 2) and enrollment of children in classes 1–5 was 123 million. The number
of children who dropped out or were held back in the same class before reaching class
5 was 12 million (NCERT, 2005b, table 20).
4 The listed retention rates are estimates. Children have non-­educational reasons for
staying in school, including free lunches provided by the state to poor students.
Staying in school may not be equivalent to progress in learning, because of retention
in the same class and other reasons. The relationship between time in school and
learning will become less straightforward in the future if the federal legislation passed
in 2009 is adopted by the states. That legislation means that schools will be unable to
fail students and year-­end exams will be eliminated in favor of continuous, compre-
hensive evaluation throughout the year.
5 In 2009, the number of schools that provide elementary education was reported to be
1.3 million (NUEPA, 2011, table 1). This number probably includes the primary and
upper primary sections in secondary and higher secondary schools and multiple sec-
tions of the classes in elementary schools.
6 The student enrollment in primary schools is 76.0% of the student population in gov-
ernment schools and 9.1% in government-­aided schools; in upper-­primary schools,
the distribution is 53.8% and 27.9% respectively. The proportion of students who
study in private schools is 15.0% in primary schools and 18.3% in upper primary
schools (NCERT, 2005b). No figures are available concerning the distribution of stu-
dents by the medium of instruction they have chosen, though Pratham (2007) includes
relevant information.
7 Private bodies often open new English-­medium schools for the general population in
violation of the State rule against it, and do not receive accreditation. Towards the
end of the Board examination, schools then petition the court to protect the interests
of students who had spent years in their schools in good faith, and often receive a
court ruling permitting the students to take the examination. This maneuver is a risk
that some private schools and parents are willing to take (Annamalai, 1998).
206   E. Annamalai

References
Aggarwal, S. (1992). Three language formula: An educational problem. New Delhi: Gian
Publishing.
Annamalai, E. (1998). Language choice in education: Conflict resolution in Indian
courts. Language Sciences, 20 (1), 29–43.
Annamalai, E. (2001). Role of the state, the community and the individual in language
maintenance. In E. Annamalai (Ed.), Managing multilingualism in India: Political and lin-
guistic manifestations (pp. 67–75). New Delhi: Sage.
Annamalai, E. (2003). Medium of power: The question of English in India. In J. W.
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Tollefson & A. B. M. Tsui (Eds.), Medium of instruction policies: Whose agenda? Which
agenda? (pp. 177–194). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Biswas, A., & Agrawal, S. P. (Eds.). (1986). Development of education in India: A historical survey
of educational documents before and after independence. New Delhi: Concept Publishing.
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from http://www.ei-­india.com/full-­report.pdf
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upload_files/mhrd/files/NPE86-mod92.pdf
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mittee. New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development.
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National Knowledge Commission. Retrieved from http://knowledgecommission.gov.
in/recommendations/language1.asp
Government of India. (2008). Towards a knowledge society. New Delhi: National Know-
ledge Commission. Retrieved from http://knowledgecommission.gov.in/downloads/
documents/towards_knowledgesociety.pdf
Government of India. (2009). Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education
Act. New Delhi: Ministry of Law and Justice. Online version http://164.100.24.219/
BillsTexts/RSBillTexts/PassedRajyaSabha/right%20of%20children%20AS%20
PASSED.pdf
Government of Karnataka. (2011). Education in Karnataka 2010–11: An analytical report.
Bangalore: Department of Education. Online version http://ssakarnataka.gov.in/pdfs/
gen_circular/SSA-­Analytical-Report-­English-2010-11.pdf
Graddol, D. (2010). English next India: The future of English in India. New Delhi: British
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2010-book.htm
NCERT. (1992). Fifth All India Educational Survey. New Delhi: National Council of
Educational Research and Training.
NCERT. (2005a). Seventh All India School Education Survey – Provisional statistics. New
Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training. Retrieved from
http://7thsurvey.ncert.nic.in
NCERT. (2005b). Seventh All India School Education Survey. Volume 2: Enrolment in
Schools. New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training. Online
version http://7thsurvey.ncert.nic.in
NCERT. (2005c). Seventh All India school education survey. Volume 3: Media of instruction
and languages taught. New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Train-
ing. Online version http://7thsurvey.ncert.nic.in
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Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training. Retrieved from

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guages.pdf
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NUEPA. (2011). Elementary education in India: Progress towards UEE: Flash statistics. New
Delhi: National University of Educational Planning and Administration. Retrieved from
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Pratham. (2007). Annual status of education report (ASER) 2006. Retrieved from http://
images2.asercentre.org/ASER_REPORTS/ASER_2006_Report.pdf
Ramalingam, K. (2009). Poor parents pushing children into English schools. In India
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oct/edu-­kgiriedn.htm
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Tollefson (Ed.), Language policies education: Critical issues (pp. 3–16). Mahwah, NJ: Law-
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rp2008/rp2008-72.pdf
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PART V

Language and Social Conflict

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The chapters in Part V confront the following critical issues: How do language
policies in education help to create, sustain, or reduce political conflict among
different ethnolinguistic groups? How have nationalist, anti-­immigrant, and
similar political movements affected language policies, and how can ethnolin-
guistic groups resist such movements? These questions focus attention on the
close relationship between language and sociopolitical conflict.
The three chapters in this part of the book examine important cases of political
violence in which language-­in-education policy plays a role. In Chapter 11, Beth
Lewis Samuelson explores the recent shift from French to English as an official
language in Rwanda. Samuelson’s historical analysis of language policy in Rwanda
shows the complex interplay of Kinyarwanda, French, and English from the colo-
nial period to the present. She examines in particular the conflict between Fran-
cophone Hutus and Anglophone Tutsi exiles who ended the 1994 genocide
through their military victory over government forces. Through interviews with
Rwandans living under the current proscription against open debates about ethni-
city and identity, Samuelson explores the contradictory pressures of English as a
global language, the link between language and ethnic affiliation, and language
policies in an educational system with inadequate human and financial resources.
In Chapter 12, David Welchman Gegeo and Karen Ann Watson-­Gegeo
present their most recent research about Malaitans living on Guadalcanal and
the island of Malaita. As a result of violence, more than 20,000 Malaitans have
fled Guadalcanal to Malaita, creating significant pressures on the educational
system, in the context of intense conflict among different ethnic groups in the
area. As a result, the education of Malaitan children has been severely disrupted,
as have earlier programs to revitalize indigenous languages and cultural practices.
In their chapter, Gegeo and Watson-­Gegeo examine creative efforts to seek
solutions to the current educational crisis, in part through reassertion of indi-
genous languages and cultural identities.
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11
RWANDA SWITCHES TO ENGLISH

Conflict, Identity, and Language-­in-Education

Policy
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Beth Lewis Samuelson

Rwanda seized the world’s attention in April 1994, when genocidal violence
broke out during a bitter guerrilla insurgency war. According to official esti-
mates, approximately 937,000 Rwandans died during the 100-day killing spree
(Republic of Rwanda, 2008). The Francophone Hutu-­led government that
instigated the genocide organized a systematic campaign to purge the country of
all members of Tutsi ethnicity as well as any Hutu political opponents (Des-
forges, 1999). In July 1994, the Anglophone Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ),
led by the descendants of longtime Rwandan Tutsi exiles who had fled social
unrest from 1959 on, took control of the country and established the transi-
tional Government of National Unity.
At the onset of the civil war and genocide, Rwanda belonged to La Francopho-
nie, as a former colony of Belgium; by the end of hostilities, Rwanda was under
the control of an Anglophone government that in short order declared English to
be an additional official language, alongside Kinyarwanda and French. Although it
is argued that adopting English as the official language can promote better com-
munication for business, foreign investment, development, and technology trans-
fer, English can also jeopardize other languages, leading to language decline and
greater linguistic homogeneity, while giving an advantage to people who already
speak the language and raising formidable barriers for those who do not have
access to good language instruction (Tollefson, 2000). In Rwanda, the benefits of
learning in English and making a rapid transition from learning in French are not
assured for the many students who cannot attend well-­resourced schools staffed by
well-­trained, fluent speakers of English. In order to understand the dramatic
change to the policy of official English, we must examine not only the potential
of the language shift to increase social and political tensions, but also the way in
which the rapid shift to English has been conceived and implemented.
212   B. L. Samuelson

Although some analyses of identity politics (Hintjens, 2008) and language-­in-

education policy (Samuelson & Freedman, 2010; Walker-­Keleher, 2006) high-
light the role that language choice and language attitudes play in Rwanda’s
ongoing efforts to promote reconciliation and peaceful coexistence, issues of
language choice have received relatively little attention in the literature on
Rwanda’s recovery and transition following the genocide. Instead, many schol-
ars have chronicled the genocide, collecting the stories of survivors (e.g., Des-
forges, 1999; Fujii, 2009; Hatzfeld, 2000; Prunier, 1995, 2009) or analyzing its
contributing factors (Hatzfeld, 2005a, 2005b; Mamdani, 2001; Newbury, 2009;
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Pottier, 2002; Power, 2003; Waldorf, 2009). Western fascination with the gen-
ocide and collective guilt over non-­intervention are apparent in journalists’
reports (Berkeley, 2002; Gourevitch, 1999) and in recent movies such as the
highly sanitized Hollywood production Hotel Rwanda (2004, directed by Terry
George) and HBO’s Sometimes in April (2005, directed by Raoul Peck). First-­
person accounts by survivors and witnesses have a wide audience, with more
published each year (e.g., Chishugi, 2010; Dallaire & Beardsley, 2005; Ilibagiza
& Erwin, 2006; Mukasonga, 2010; Mushikiwabo & Kramer, 2006; Rurangwa,
2009; Rusesabagina, 2006; Sebarenzi & Mullane, 2010). These accounts give
little indication of the significance of language in Rwanda as an index of iden-
tity and political power. In contrast, this chapter argues that language has
emerged in Rwanda as a critical factor in what is essentially an identity conflict,
with the language of instruction playing a central role. In particular, Rwanda
serves as a case study for the influence of English as a global language in a post-­
conflict context.
In 2007, I participated in seminars for secondary-­school history teachers in
Rwanda sponsored by the National Curriculum Development Center and fac­
ilitated by an American non-­profit, Facing History and Ourselves. The teachers
received training to use a new Rwandan history curriculum that had been
developed collaboratively by Rwanda history experts, teachers, parents, and sec-
ondary students, with assistance from outside experts through the Human
Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley (Freedman et al., 2004;
Freedman, Weinstein, Murphy, & Longman, 2011). By analyzing interviews
conducted with 11 teachers who participated in these seminars, I have tried to
document their attitudes and beliefs about Rwanda’s various language-­in-
education policies. In the interviews, teachers discussed their views of the roles
that Kinyarwanda, French, and English play in the educational system. In the
analysis that follows, I first review the language-­in-education policy situation in
Rwanda from a historical perspective, tracing the influence and development of
the country’s three major languages. I then review the trilingual and bilingual
periods in turn and examine the perspectives of Rwandan secondary teachers
who were interviewed in 2007 about their views of the adoption of English.
The aim of this chapter is to trace the trajectory of events in Rwanda, exploring
the connections between language-­in-education policy, civil conflict, and
Rwanda Switches to English   213

reconciliation. In conjunction with other major challenges facing Rwanda –

land reform, post-­genocide justice, and reconciliation (Gready, 2010; Straus &
Waldorf, 2011) – language policy must be recognized as a critical factor in con-
tinuing tensions.

Rwanda’s Languages
Kinyarwanda, French, and English have each played a major role in Rwanda’s
social and political history. The current Constitution of Rwanda, Article 5,
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states that “[t]he national language is Kinyarwanda. The official languages are
Kinyarwanda, French, and English” (Republic of Rwanda, 2003, p.  5). The
designation of Kinyarwanda alone as a national language reflects a widespread
sentiment that Kinyarwanda is the language that indexes the heart and soul of
Rwandan culture (Gafaranga & Niyomugabo, 2010).
Although official statistics are difficult to obtain, an estimated 99% of the
population can speak Kinyarwanda, and 90% speak only Kinyarwanda. Estimates
of the total number of English speakers range from 1.9% to 5%. Approximately
5–15% of the population speak French (Calvet, 1994; Leclerc, 2008; Mun-
yankesha, 2004), although this percentage has probably dropped, owing to the
large number of Francophone Hutu who have left for exile. Estimates run as
high as 11% of the population able to speak Kiswahili, but these numbers are
likely higher now that the country has joined the East African Community.
Other languages present in Rwanda include Luganda, Lingala, and Runyankole-
­Ruchiga (Munyaneza, 2010).
The lack of precise estimates is complicated by the links between language
choice and identities, both place based and ethnic. The makeup of the popula-
tion is approximately 89% Hutu, 10% Tutsi, and less than 1% Twa (Ethnologue,
2011). The Rwandan Senate has passed legislation prohibiting “genocidal ideol-
ogy” or “divisionism” (Republic of Rwanda, 2006), thereby suppressing public
dialogue about ethnic differences and forcibly constructing a new collective
identity: “There are no ethnicities here. We are all Rwandan” (Lacey, 2004).
Ethnicity cannot be discussed openly, so language preference has become an
index for ethnic identity (Hintjens, 2008; Samuelson & Freedman, 2010). Nev-
ertheless, while ethnicity itself has become a forbidden topic, it remains an
“unobservable variable in most (empirical) studies of post-­genocide Rwanda”
(Ingelaere, 2010, p. 275).
Although current estimates show that most Rwandans speak only Kinyarwanda,
anyone who has completed primary education has had some training in one or
both of the former colonial languages. English and French speakers are frequently
members of two small rival elites (Hintjens, 2008), with the Anglophone elite
firmly in power since the end of the war and genocide in 1994, when it replaced
the pre-­1994 Hutu elite, which was Francophone. It is the language choice of the
elite, then, that has become an index for personal and ethnic identity.
214   B. L. Samuelson

The RPF government has devoted enormous efforts to ensure that there is
no repeat to the violence of 1994. The concept of “genocidal ideology” or
“divisionism” (Republic of Rwanda, 2006) in Senate legislation is derived from
genocide studies and used in the 2003 Constitution; it entered the social dis-
course on ethnicity in a new and more urgent way in 2006, when “genocide
ideology” was defined by the Rwandan Senate as “a set of ideas or representa-
tions whose major role is to stir up hatred and create a pernicious atmosphere
favouring the implementation and legitimisation of the persecution and elimina-
tion of a category of the population” (Rwandan Senate, 2006, p.  16). Chief
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among the forbidden “ideas or representations” is the use of ethnicity to

promote fear, hatred, and violence. Much of the interpretation of genocide ide-
ology has thus centered on the eradication of ethnicity in Rwanda, to the point
where giving credence to the idea that ethnicity exists in Rwanda is also pun-
ished (Morrill, 2006). Despite the continued disagreements among scholars
about describing group difference through biological factors, features of lan-
guage use, or cultural practices (Fought, 2006), the Rwandan Senate adopted a
rather limited definition of ethnicity. According to the Rwandan definition,
“members of the same ethnic group are those in a community who speak the
same language, share the same culture, live on the same territory and consider
themselves as belonging to the same group” (Rwandan Senate, 2006, p.  17).
Although this definition reflects an understanding of ethnicity as a multidimen-
sional and changeable construct influenced by perceived difference in language,
dialect, race, locality, or cultural practices (Eltringham, 2004), the Rwandan
authorities have decided to suppress any discussion of these differences and to
forcibly (co-)construct a new collective identity (Lacey, 2004), instead of exam-
ining the co-­construction of the Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa groups and the ways that
these constructs can have real saliency for the people who see themselves as
belonging to one group and not another. This atmosphere makes inquiry into
the possible relationships between dialect use, regional provenance, and group
affiliations potentially sensitive. Nevertheless, external scholars continue to assert
that ethnicity plays a role in the daily lives of most Rwandans, perhaps a greater
role now than before the genocide (Buckley-­Zistel, 2006; Longman & Ruta-
gengwa, 2004; Zorbas, 2004).
Beyond issues of ethnicity, Rwanda is a country where political dissent is
assiduously squelched. Human Rights Watch (2010) has issued numerous
reports on the oppressive nature of what has become a de facto one-­party
authoritarian state, with civil society squeezed by lack of internal freedoms
(Gready, 2010). Because the international community was quick to embrace
Rwanda’s development and eager to view the country as making a rapid trans-
ition to democracy, growing awareness of oppression of dissent, exclusion, and
dictatorship has been muted, although the reelection of President Paul Kagame
in August 2010, in which he received 93% of the vote, was marred by suspen-
sions of newspapers, arrests of journalists and political opponents, grenade
Rwanda Switches to English   215

attacks in Kigali, the expulsion of human rights observers, and the murder of an
opposition party official (Gettleman & Kron, 2010; Kron & Gettleman, 2010a,
2010b; Rice, 2010). International NGOs have been slow to recognize that deep
popular frustration is likely to result in the emergence of structural and acute
violence (Reyntjens, 2006, 2011). A recent volume edited by Straus and
Waldorf (2011) chronicling Rwanda’s slide from democratization attracted stri-
dent and public personal attacks on the several contributors. Such dissent is
almost impossible to find internally, as many of Kagame’s opponents have been
jailed or have fled into external exile.
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I move now to an overview of Rwanda’s three official languages. Tracing

first Kinyarwanda from pre-­colonial times, then Belgian French since the colo-
nial era, and finally English in the post-­genocide period, I examine the role of
each language in the educational policy of Rwanda.

Kinyarwanda

Kinyarwanda in pre-­colonial Rwanda

Although there is considerable disagreement among Rwandans over pre-­
colonial social and ethnic relations, most agree that as far back as oral history can
provide evidence, all Rwandans, whether Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa, have spoken
Kinyarwanda. Rwanda’s population of 9.9 million shares Kinyarwanda as the
sole indigenous language, while, by comparison, Cameroon (population 17
million) is home to 279 living languages. South Africa (population 43 million)
has 24 languages (Gordon & Grimes, 2005), and its Constitution recognizes 11
of them as official (Heugh, 2007). Rwanda’s relative lack of sociolinguistic
complexity is uncommon among African nations and has been used to justify
the historical unity of Rwanda’s people.
Kinyarwanda (also known as Ikinyarwanda or Rwanda) is a prototypical
Bantu language, with several mutually intelligible variants spoken in Burundi,
Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-­Kinshasa), Uganda, and Tanzania
(Kimenyi, 1986). Interdisciplinary archaeological and reconstructive linguistic
research examining iron-­smelting technology (Schmidt, 1997), agricultural prac-
tices, and food vocabularies (Schoenbrun, 1993a, 1993b) in the region suggests
that Sudanic and Cushitic languages may have been assimilated into Great Lakes
Bantu languages in the region around 2,500 years ago (Obura, 2003). The Twa
minority, who are related to other forest-­dwellers across Central Africa, speak a
dialect called Rutwa, and several other dialects have been labeled as “Hutu”
dialects (Lera, Ululera, Hera, Ndara, Shobyo, Tshogo, Ndogo) (Gordon &
Grimes, 2005). Rwandan linguists differ on the number of regional dialects –
from six to seven – and their prevalence, but they agree that the majority of
Rwandans use standard Kinyarwanda, and that the dialects are used in informal
contexts only (Munyankesha, 2004). Because the current ideology of language
216   B. L. Samuelson

and ethnicity in Rwanda forbids discourse that might highlight differences

between groups, any discussion of historical linguistic evidence for the merging
of distinct languages into modern-­day Kinyarwanda is politically sensitive. The
effect of this ideology has been particularly brutal for the Twa minority, who
experience significant discrimination in access to education and livelihood
opportunities, but whose needs cannot be addressed without acknowledging
their cultural, social, and ethnic differences (African Commission on Human
and Peoples’ Rights, Working Group of Experts on Indigenous Populations/
Communities, 2010).
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Kinyarwanda in colonial and postcolonial Rwanda

During the colonial period, the Belgians ran French-­medium schools to educate
a small, mainly Tutsi, bureaucratic elite. French was retained as the language of
prestige and political power immediately after independence, and Kinyarwanda
remained less developed because it was not the language of instruction beyond
primary school (McLean Hilker, 2011). In the postcolonial period (1962 to the
present), Kinyarwanda has the status of a de facto regional language, although
nomenclature masks this reality. Varieties are spoken by groups in the bordering
countries of Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
For example, Kirundi, the national language of Burundi, Rwanda’s “twin”
kingdom-­nation to the south, is mutually intelligible with Kinyarwanda. Of the
estimated 25–35 million speakers of Kinyarwanda today, almost 10 million
reside within the borders of Rwanda (Kagame, Chaka, & Busingye, 2007). The
name “Ururimi,” which means “language” or “tongue” in Kinyarwanda (Niyo-
mugabo, 2009), has been adopted to describe the language community of speak-
ers of Kinyarwanda both inside and outside of Rwanda (New Times, 2008). A
recent ethnography of the Rwandan Senate demonstrated that while English
and French were the languages that often appeared in the public face of the
Senate in correspondence, draft legislation, signs, and announcements, Kinyar-
wanda was at the center of daily activities, including debates on the Senate floor
(Gafaranga & Niyomugabo, 2010). These developments reflect an in vivo
(Calvet, 1994) evolution of language use that is characterized by spontaneous
growth of language use (hence not planned by decision-­making bureaucrats)
through mutually intelligible languages and lingua francas across national borders
and regions.
Although Kinyarwanda is the national language and the linguistic currency
of daily life throughout the country, it has experienced the benign neglect that
has been the fate of many other African languages. Rwandans who do not speak
Kinyarwanda are usually “old-­caseload” refugees who have grown up abroad.
They are frequently ridiculed by their compatriots for their lack of Kinyarwanda
skills, as Kinyarwanda is viewed as a great unifier. Most believe that no true
Rwandan should be unable to speak it. In an interview in 2007, Charles, a
Rwanda Switches to English   217

Rwandan teacher born and raised in Uganda who moved to Rwanda after the
genocide, shared with me the fact that he didn’t consider himself fluent in
Kinyarwanda:

Let me tell you, we are getting very many people who are not fluent in
Kinyarwanda. Even myself, I cannot express myself well in Kinyarwanda.
There are many. There are many! Because you find that in many areas
that need technology, the people [working in these sectors] are foreigners,
or they are people brought up in other countries.
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Charles also explained that many Rwandans of his acquaintance did not speak
the language well. The actual number of Rwandans who do not speak Kinyar-
wanda fluently is difficult to ascertain.

Belgian French

French in colonial and postcolonial Rwanda

French arrived in Rwanda when the League of Nations awarded Belgium
control of the Ruanda-­Urundi mandate territory after the defeat of imperial
Germany in 1919. Following the divide-­and-rule policy common among Euro-
pean colonizers, the Belgians allied themselves with the Tutsi nobility at the
expense of the Hutu majority population, while applying Western racial ideo­
logy to preexisting Rwandan social and economic divisions. Through this lens,
they considered the Tutsi to be racially superior to the Hutu and established
French-­medium schools to educate the sons of Tutsi nobles as Rwandan colo-
nial officials. Hutu youth could gain study places, but they were not given pri-
ority. This schooling was not compulsory, nor was it free.
At the time of independence from Belgian rule in 1962, Hutu factions seized
control of the government. French continued as the language of secondary and
tertiary schooling, as well as the language of business and officialdom. But after
independence, in contrast to the colonial period, Hutu students received prior-
ity in gaining access to schools, while places for Tutsi students were severely
limited.

French in post-­1994 Rwanda

During the postwar period (1994 to the present), French has suffered from
negative attitudes as a result of the alleged involvement of the French army in
Opération Turquoise, the only international intervention during the genocide,
conducted unilaterally by the French but widely perceived by Rwandans as
aiding the Hutu genocidaires rather than providing sanctuary for Tutsi survivors
(National Public Radio, 2008; Pottier, 2002; Prunier, 1995). Many of the
218   B. L. Samuelson

English-­speaking returnees have little interest in learning French, which they

view as the language of the French allies and supporters of the Francophone
genocidaires. Diplomatic relations with France were cut off for several years in
response to the French indictment of President Paul Kagame by a French judge
for his alleged involvement in shooting down then-­president Juvénal Habyar-
imana’s plane in 1994 (Doyle, 2006) and to the 2008 arrest in Germany and
extradition to France for war crimes of a senior official from Kagame’s adminis-
tration (McGreal, 2008).
According to Canadian sociolinguist Leclerc (2008), Rwanda is situated on
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“la ligne Maginot linguistique” (the linguistic Maginot Line) between formerly
British territories to the east (Ugandan, Kenya, Tanzania) and the former colo-
nies of France and Belgium to the west (Burundi, Congo-­Kinshasa, Chad,
Central African Republic, Congo-­Brazzaville, Ivory Coast). Leclerc writes that
English is a sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing that destroys the status of French
wherever it is introduced into Francophone territories:

[O]n sait que, une fois que l’anglais est admis comme langue officielle au
sein d’une organisation nationale ou internationale, les Américains,
souvent aidés des Britanniques, font tous les efforts nécessaires pour élim-
iner les autres langues qui ne deviennent plus alors que de simples véhi-
cules de traduction. Pensons à ce qui se passe présentement au Burundi et
au Congo-­Kinshasa, tandis qu’on essaie subtilement de faire entrer le
“loup dans la bergerie” (l’anglais).

[As we know, once English is accepted as an official language in a national

or international organization, the Americans, often with assistance from
the British, make every effort to eliminate other languages, which become
little more than vehicles of translation. Consider what is currently hap-
pening in Burundi and Congo-­Kinshasa, where efforts are under way to
allow in “the wolf in sheep’s clothing” (English).]

These trenchant metaphors for the influence of English in Francophone Africa

– the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the linguistic Maginot line – express some of the
Francophone apprehension about the encroachment of English into La Franco-
phonie and the diminishing sphere of influence of French in sub-­Saharan Africa
(Omoniyi, 2007).
In an interview, Joseph, a Francophone Rwandan who was a secondary
student living in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, stated that he thought
that French was dying in Rwanda. He did most of the interview in English and
when asked if he ever felt pressure to use English, he stated, in English:

Yes, now when we are looking for a job, you see, our country is becom-
ing little by little Anglophone, so we are obliged to use English when we
Rwanda Switches to English   219

go to look for a job, to apply for a job. When you know English, it’s OK.
French is, nowadays, French is expiring, you see.

Joseph’s comments, coming from a speaker of French who was making the
transition to English and who insisted on speaking in English throughout most
of his interview, suggest that French would have continued to lose ground to
English without a rapid change in language of instruction. As late as 2011,
French was still present in official documents on government websites, testi-
mony to the relative ease of announcing a language shift in comparison with
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actually enforcing or implementing it.

I turn now to English and its status in Rwanda since the end of the
genocide.

English

English in post-­1994 Rwanda

English became the de facto language of influence beginning in July 1994 when
the victorious Rwandan Patriotric Front took control of Kigali. This victory set
the stage for a large influx of diasporic old-­caseload Rwandan refugees return-
ing to their homeland from nearby Anglophone countries (Uganda primarily,
but also Kenya and Tanzania). The number of these returnees grew to the point
where they equaled or exceeded the number of Rwandans who had lost their
lives in the genocide (Prunier, 2009). With political and economic power con-
centrated in the hands of an elite group of Anglophone returnees from Uganda,
the decision to establish English as an official language was made in 1996.
Many Rwandans welcomed English as a means for improving international
connections, opening up access to education abroad, and developing Rwanda’s
economy (Freedman et al., 2004). Fieldwork in 2001 found that Rwandans
accepted English for the same reasons that parents, teachers, and students in
other countries worldwide are adopting English (Freedman et al., 2004): Rwan-
dans perceived that the future of globalization is written in English, and they
wanted to able to participate in that new world. The process of Anglicization of
Rwanda has proceeded to the point where Rwanda joined the East African
Community and gained membership in the Commonwealth in 2009.

The Trilingual Language-­in-Education Policy (1996–2008)

Rwanda’s trilingual language policy lasted 14 years, from 1996, when English
was formally declared an additional official language, to 2008, when President
Kagame announced plans to discontinue the use of French. In this section, I
review the policy and explore some of the perspectives of teachers interviewed
during this period.
220   B. L. Samuelson

During this period, Rwandan schools implemented a complex trilingual

system that required all children to learn all three languages. Kinyarwanda was
the language of instruction for the youngest students. French and English were
compulsory subjects (Obura, 2003), but the students were required to make a
switch to French- or English-­medium instruction beginning in the upper
primary levels (4–6). Children who completed primary school and passed the
national examinations were expected to transition to an English- or French-­
medium secondary school. National examinations were offered in both French
and English. All students took classes in Kinyarwanda language and literature
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throughout their schooling.

At the university level, students were expected to be able to complete aca-
demic work in both languages. The nation’s major higher education institutions
– the National University of Rwanda (NUR), the Kigali Institute of Education
(KIE), and the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) – were offi-
cially English–French bilingual institutions where faculty members could lecture
in either language, with students expected to follow along in both. Students
who lacked proficiency in one language were required to complete a bridge
year of language studies before beginning their studies (Obura, 2003).
This policy placed an enormous burden on an educational system already
under strain from efforts to rebuild and rehabilitate following the war. The per-
centage of qualified primary school teachers had fallen from 57% in 1992 to
32.5% in 1997, and the percentage of qualified secondary school teachers
dropped from 63% to 33% in the same period (Republic of Rwanda, 1998).
Approximately 75% of public-­sector employees, including teachers, either were
victims of the violence or participated in the genocide (Republic of Rwanda,
1998). Given the severe challenges arising from imposing the language-­policy
changes on a ravaged educational system that lacked skilled teachers and suffi-
cient resources, the ultimate success of the trilingual policy was never assured
(Leclerc, 2008; Munyankesha, 2004). Indeed, most schools did not have the
resources to provide content courses in both French and English, so most
elected to be primarily English-­medium or French-­medium. The majority con-
tinued operating as French-­medium schools. Some schools were bilingual, but
some had separate Anglophone and Francophone streams, allowing students to
take content classes in the language they knew best while continuing to learn
the other as a subject (Obura, 2003).
During this period, warnings about the potential for the trilingual policy to
exacerbate divisions among Rwandans came largely from international observ-
ers. Language choice was already a “quasi-­ethnic identifier” (Walker-­Keleher,
2006, p. 46) of the likely ethnicity of a person (Anglophone Tutsi, Francophone
Hutu, and Francophone Tutsi genocide victims). Given the prohibition against
speaking about ethnicity, language choice became an even more salient stand-­in
for ethnic differences (Hintjens, 2008; Samuelson & Freedman, 2010). Choice
of school along language-­preference lines made school segregation a real
Rwanda Switches to English   221

possibility, as students in English-­medium schools would be more likely to

interact with other Anglophone Tutsi students and have fewer opportunities to
engage in real collaborative learning situations with Francophone Hutu students
or Francophone Tutsi genocide survivors.

Teacher Perspectives on Language during the Trilingual Period

In July 2007, near the end of the trilingual period, I interviewed secondary
teachers who participated in the history curriculum seminars. The teachers
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exhibited positive attitudes toward English, and even believed that English was
an easier language than French. All welcomed it as a way of making educational
achievement more accessible, but they had different views on the ways that
Rwanda’s language situation could contribute toward reconciliation. Few
seemed to anticipate the abrupt policy shift that would be announced approxi-
mately 18 months later.
Charles, who had explained to me earlier that his Kinyarwanda skills were
not strong, said that he found the English language both simple and rich: “It is
easier for students to express themselves [in English].” Eugene, also an Anglo-
phone teacher from Uganda, believed that “English reveals the information
properly to the one you are instructing.” Francophone teachers also shared
similar views about the ease of learning in English versus learning in French.
Joseph, a Francophone teacher, contextualized the switch to English from the
perspective of an English learner:

Because we have lived a long time in the French system, the students are
afraid and they say that it will be difficult to know English, but little by
little they are appreciating English when they consider the effort they put
into knowing English is less than the effort they put into knowing French.
You see that French is more complicated than English. They appreciate
learning English.

I asked teachers to discuss their views of how the trilingual policy could
promote reconciliation. Some, fearing that language differences could lead to
conflict that would hinder the process of reconciliation, believed that all Rwan-
dans should learn both English and French. Eddie, an Anglophone teacher from
Ugandan, recognized that English had the relatively foreign status of a language
that was introduced by a conquering army. He suggested that Anglophones
should learn to speak French:

Because not all know English. Because if you try to talk to them in
English, they say, “They are now bringing their foreign language.” So it
is better if you talk to someone and say “How are you?” It is better to
also say “Bonjour.” You can at least know the two languages. But I feel
222   B. L. Samuelson

that if you only know one language, you may be talking to people who
are not knowing it. And that may cause some kind of difference [. . .]
which may not bring reconciliation.

Likewise, Béatrice, a Francophone teacher who had survived the genocide,

believed that learning several languages would enable Rwandans to communic-
ate freely and comfortably with each other:

Vous voyez que [être bilingue] peut permettre à la réconciliation, dans le

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cas de se sentir à l’aise. Quand on est capable de s’exprimer en français,

quand on est capable de s’exprimer en anglais, on ne se limite pas. Si on
ne se limite pas, si tu va parler avec un groupe qui parle anglais, si tu va
parler avec en groupe qui parle français, tu te sens à l’aise. Je crois que ça
se peut aider. Vous voyez qu’il y a . . . ça peut aider à la réconciliation
aussi. Si tu te sens à l’aise dans touts les partis. Je crois que ça peut per-
mettre. Puisque la réconciliation c’est quoi . . . c’est la mise ensemble des
deux côtés. Si on ne se limite pas, quand on va arriver ici et là, je crois
que ça peut permettre aussi, comme le départ de l’unité et la
réconciliation.

[You see that [being bilingual] can allow for reconciliation, in the case of
feeling at ease. When you are able to express yourself in French, when
you are able to express yourself in English, you are not limited. If you are
not limited, if you speak with a group who speak English, if you speak
with a group who speak French, you feel comfortable. I think that that
can help. You see that there are . . . it can help reconciliation also. If you
feel comfortable wherever you are. I think that it can allow [for reconcili-
ation]. Since reconciliation is the bringing together of both sides. If you
aren’t limited, when you go here and there, I think that it can also serve
as the starting point for unity and reconciliation.]

Other teachers believe that the language differences should be dealt with by
designating a single language that everyone should learn. This step would not
only promote unity but also help to reduce the inefficiencies brought about by
the lack of a shared language. Eugene echoed the sentiments of many Rwan-
dans when he stated that Rwanda had a language problem. He referred to the
situation in the history seminar, where everything had to be translated into at
least one other language. When the facilitator spoke in English, an interpreter
had to be present to translate into French. Likewise, a French-­speaking facilita-
tor needed an English interpreter. Even when Kinyarwanda was the language of
the facilitator, the discourse still needed to be translated, this time into English,
since the Anglophone participants were the ones who were less likely to speak
fluent Kinyarwanda. Eugene expressed himself as follows:
Rwanda Switches to English   223

Here we still have the problem of language, now in Rwanda. We don’t

have any other uniting language . . . even we use more time because of
language. If we had a uniting language, do you think that we would be
using the time that we are using here? [referring to the discussion in the
history seminar]. . . . Compared with Uganda, at least English unites people
there, all over the country, as far as administration is concerned. Now
here, I don’t know for how long it is bilingual. I don’t know how long
we shall go on like this, and implementing things normally, too. Because
language shows as if we are not one, as if we are not Rwandese. The
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means of instruction is very important and vital in development. A person

may tell you something which is instrumental, but because you have not
understood it, you remain undeveloped. That is why we would suggest
. . . there must be enforcement or other new strategies in leading to the
teaching of English in the country right from the grassroots. . . . Now if I
say that English will help in the reconciliation process, basing on that
grounds, I’m a hundred percent correct. English will help.

Claver, a Francophone Rwandan whose family fled to Burundi during the First
Republic (1973–1990) to escape persecution directed at Tutsis, declared that he
thought the addition of English was very positive in the schools:

C’est une très bonne chose. C’est une très bonne chose. Parce que c’est
partout aujourd’hui; on sait que c’est très important. Tout pratiquement,
il faut parler anglais. C’est intéressant . . . sauf que, c’est dommage que ça
va encore cristalliser les divisions. Parce qu’il y’en a qui croient que
l’introduction de l’anglais, c’est parce qu’il y a le président qui est anglo-
phone; il est d’Ouganda. Ouais, il y a des divisions ici; il y a toujours des
problèmes. Les Rwandais sont difficiles. Si ce n’est pas les ethnies, ce sont
les origines. Moi, Claver, je suis de Burundi. Des autres sont de je ne sais
pas. L’autre qui est anglophone. Mais dans les écoles c’est une bonne
chose. Je ne crois qu’il y a personne qui refuse l’anglais; on peut refuser le
français, oui, mais l’anglais non. [. . .] L’anglais intéresse beaucoup les
élèves, parce qu’on sait que aujourd’hui on ne peut faire rien sans cette
langue. Ouai, ouai.

[It is a very good thing. It is a very good thing. Because it is everywhere

today; we know that it is very important. Practically speaking, it is neces-
sary to speak English. It is interesting . . . except that, it is unfortunate that
this will still crystallize divisions. Because there are some who believe that
the introduction of English is because there is the president who is
English, who comes from Uganda. Yeah, there are divisions here; there
are always problems. The Rwandans are difficult. If it’s not ethnic groups,
then it’s origins. Me, Claver, I am from Burundi. Others are from I know
224   B. L. Samuelson

not where. Another is Anglophone . . . But in the schools, it is a good

thing. I do believe that no one refuses English; it’s possible to refuse
French, yes, but English, no. . . . English interests the students a lot,
because we know that today we can do nothing without this language.
Yeah. Yeah.]

These teachers were speaking to me in 2007, near the end of the trilingual
period. All had positive attitudes towards English and accepted its addition.
With the exception of Eugene, none seemed to anticipate the upcoming switch
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to a bilingual policy.

The Bilingual Language-­in-Education Policy, 2008 to the Present

The second period in contemporary Rwandan language-­in-education policy
began at the end of 2008, when, by cabinet resolution, French was dropped as
the language of instruction in schools. The ramifications of this policy change
were intended to reach all areas of Rwandan society where French was formerly
used, including the law, conferences, road signs, and textbooks. According to
Munyaneza (2010), the main purpose of the switch was “harmonization of the
curriculum” (p. 13). Although this step may have been planned for some time
at the administrative level, the manner in which the shift was carried out may
have only served to increase tensions between ethnic groups in Rwanda.
The transition took place very quickly, within a two-­year period
(2008–2010). In 2008, secondary school and university students were told that
they must pass their examinations in English by July 2009. Even at the primary
level, P.6 (sixth-­grade) students who until 2008 had been studying primarily in
Kinyarwanda and French had to take their national examinations in English in
2009. Francophone teachers were required to study English in their free time
and were expected to pass English competence exams if they wished to keep on
teaching. For the generation of teachers who were trained in French, and for
the current cohorts of students who had been studying in French while learning
English as a subject, the prospects of making a smooth and rapid transition to
English-­medium education without detriment to livelihood and educational
prospects were doubtful and highly stressful.
Teachers were provided with classes to help them improve their English;
however, many complaints arose about the quality of these classes. The Ministry
of Education (MINEDUC) announced that it planned to punish teachers who
did not comply with orders to attend the classes (MINEDUC, 2010b, 2011;
New Times, 2010). In the rural areas, where many schools still lack basic ameni-
ties such as running water, and must hold double shifts every day to accommo-
date the student population, the transition to English placed an even greater
burden on overloaded teachers, many of whom were graduates of Francophone
teacher training institutes. The new policy threatened these teachers with the
Rwanda Switches to English   225

loss of their jobs if they were not able to improve their English proficiency
quickly. Furthermore, competition from Anglophone teachers in other East
African Community countries, who were now able to find work in Rwanda,
added to the instability of these teachers’ jobs.
The emphasis on English-­medium instruction for primary students ignored
the potential for mother-­tongue education that would allow children to develop
Kinyarwanda literacy while also learning English (or French) as a subject in the
early grades (Samuelson & Freedman, 2010). In 2010, the Ministry of Education
pulled back on its 2008 decision to push English to early primary grades. It
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made this reversal partially in response to growing concern over the number of
young people who are uncomfortable speaking Kinyarwanda. This reversal also
followed recognition by African scholars that African children can learn better
when the language of instruction is their first language and that children who
must complete all of their education in a language that is not their mother
tongue are susceptible to language loss (Afrique en ligne, 2010). Press releases
from the Ministry of Education underscored this concern (Kwizera, 2011;
MINEDUC, 2010a).

Critical Perspectives on English in Rwanda

Rwanda is not the only country to undergo a shift to English as the language of
instruction in recent years. Privileging English over local languages and promot-
ing English-­based content instruction is a growing trend worldwide, and English
is widely perceived as a prerequisite for participation in a global economy
(Brutt-­Griffler, 2002), despite uncertainty about the effects of policies that privi-
lege English over local languages and that promote English-­based content
instruction at ever-­lower grades (Brock-­Utne & Hopson, 2005; Brocke-­Utne,
2002; Hornberger, 2008). In Africa, Namibia (Harlech-­Jones, 1990), Botswana
(Magogwe, 2007), Mali (Canvin, 2007), Djibouti (Dudzik, 2007), and South
Africa (Heugh, 2007; Uys, van der Wait, van den Berg, & Botha, 2007; Webb,
2004) are implementing dramatic changes in their language policies. Elsewhere,
China (G. Hu, 2008; Y. Hu, 2007), Pakistan (Rassool & Mansoor, 2007), and
South Korea (Jo, 2008) are enhancing the status of English as a medium of
instruction at ever-­lower grade levels. The most recent example is the newly
formed country of South Sudan, which has adopted English as an official lan-
guage since its partition from Arabic-­dominant Sudan in 2011.
While Rwanda has made progress in educational reform, its language policy,
especially its policy for language of instruction, appears to be provisional tinker-
ing; its most recent decision to preserve Kinyarwanda in the early elementary
levels, coming quickly on the heels of a push for English, gives the impression
that the policy is being created on a contingent basis in response to challenges
and pressures, without a clear guiding vision. Such rapid policy changes suggest
that policy has been dictated by sociopolitical priorities rather than by careful
226   B. L. Samuelson

analysis of the educational interests of children, particularly those living in rural

areas and attending mainly Francophone schools. The continued emphasis on
English will undoubtedly continue to favor relatively well-­off Anglophone stu-
dents attending urban schools.
ELT professionals, while perhaps sympathetic to common rationales for
teaching English in international contexts, need to be aware of the tensions and
challenges that arise from language-­in-education policy decisions that favor the
teaching of English. It is particularly important to maintain a critical perspective
on the ecological context of English-­promotion policies in Rwanda, and pos-
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sible unintended consequences in the form of communicative inequality, eco-

nomic exploitation, and resistance. Indeed, Canagarajah (2005) has suggested
that social and political tensions such as those faced by Rwanda are often an
expected outcome of language-­in-education policy and planning changes, rather
than evidence that the policy is flawed, while McLean Hilker (2011) warns that
future language policy should ensure that tensions between groups are not exac-
erbated by one group gaining educational advantage.
Ultimately, language policies should reflect the importance of teaching chil-
dren first in a language that they can understand well. Recent research high-
lights the critical importance that language-­in-education policies play in the
success of educational systems worldwide (Pinnock, 2009). Children who must
learn in a language they do not understand well are always at risk of educational
failure, but in multilingual nations that are characterized by high levels of fragil-
ity or conflict, with large rural populations where many children do not have
access to mother-­tongue language, the risks are amplified. Children need at least
five years of second language study to reach academic language proficiency (see
Cummins & Yee-­Fun, 2007), so most pupils who begin learning a second lan-
guage in primary school are not going to be ready for academic work in that
language by the time they reach upper primary grades. Indeed, Pinnock (2009)
argues that failure to place sufficient emphasis on mother-­tongue education is
endangering the international goals of the UNESCO and UNICEF program
Education for All, a worldwide initiative to provide high-­quality basic educa-
tion to all people by 2015. As a policy recommendation, Pinnock urges that the
first six years of schooling be provided in the child’s mother tongue, along with
the gradual, structured introduction of second languages.
Pinnock (2009) defines “linguistic fractionalization” (p. 9) as the complexity
and extensiveness of linguistic, religious, or cultural divisions between groups in
a single nation. In Pinnock’s analysis, Rwanda is not considered linguistically
fractionalized, and with only one major indigenous language it is far less multi-
lingual than most African nations. Yet Rwanda’s recent history of violent con-
flict, the large proportion of its population living in poverty, and its current
political repression place its language policies under enormous strain and infuse
them with social and political significance. Despite these challenges, a prominent
goal of the Rwandan Ministry of Education is to increase access to schooling for
Rwanda Switches to English   227

the general population through Education for All (United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2007). Given the current circumstances,
Rwanda is well situated to develop Kinyarwanda as a language of instruction
through the primary grades and beyond, ultimately providing high-­quality basic
education to all of its citizens.
One implication of language policy issues in Rwanda is the need for the
English-­teaching profession to insist on a critical perspective toward the role
that English plays in education worldwide and the consequences for children
who are forced to learn in a language that is not familiar to them. Engaged crit-
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ical professionals can advocate for linguistic rights (Phillipson, 2009; Skutnabb-­
Kangas, 2000), ask tough questions about appropriate pedagogy for teaching
English in multilingual and global contexts (McKay, 2003), and support mother
tongue education and additive multilingualism when the circumstances warrant
(Annamalai, 2003; Hornberger, 2003).

Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Academy of Education,
which made this research possible through a NAEd/Spencer Foundation Post-
doctoral Fellowship.

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12
THE CRITICAL VILLAGER
REVISITED

Continuing Transformations of Language and

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Education in Solomon Islands

David Welchman Gegeo and Karen Ann Watson-­Gegeo

We in the villages never received any help from the government, province,
or churches during the Tenson. They sent help to the urban areas but not to
us. We were on our own. So we ourselves set up village schools and a sec-
ondary school for our children with help from overseas. Some teachers were
untrained, and classes were large, but what could we do?
(Benjamin Gwaufungu, rural villager, 2011)

We held long village meetings, they lasted all day, talking about the problems
the Tenson brought – crime, violations of falafala [culture], strangers taking
people’s land, crowded villages, deaths. We had to deal with these problems
and the disputes they caused. We were guided by our culture. . . . When I am
not in the gardens, I sit in my house and think about things. I want our chil-
dren to be ngwae ali‘afu ki [complete human beings] firmly grounded in
Kwara‘ae language before they learn other things.
(George Ming Buamae, rural village chief, 2011)

More than a decade ago, when we wrote the “critical villager” paper that
appeared in the first edition of Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues
(Gegeo & Watson-­Gegeo, 2002a; Tollefson, 2002), villagers in Kwara‘ae,
Malaita, were claiming leadership in the direction of rural development and
schooling. Some local teachers were using the Kwara‘ae language and indigen-
ous cultural practices such as fa‘amanata‘anga (shaping the mind, teaching, coun-
selling; Gegeo & Watson-­Gegeo, 1999; Watson-­Gegeo & Gegeo, 1990, 1992,
1994, 1995, 1999b) in classroom pedagogy. A large local research effort – the
Kwara‘ae Genealogy Project on the Kwara‘ae language, falafala, and indigenous
epistemology – was under way. But then violence erupted on Guadalcanal, the
234   D. W. Gegeo and K. A. Watson-Gegeo

location of Honiara, the national capital. Attacks by indigenous Guadalcanal

islanders (Guales) on people of Malaita heritage living and working there forced
20,000 Malaitans to flee “back” to Malaita with their families. The trauma of
the violence, and the social disruption caused by forced mass migration to an
island many had never even visited, changed the political and policy landscape
on Malaita.
In this chapter, we discuss the continuing transformations in language and
education on Malaita through the formation of new schools, and the rebirth of
indigenous projects as a new generation of elders and adults seeks to address the
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problems of youth whose lives were dramatically altered by their experiences

with armed conflict. Although traditional language forms were further under-
mined in the Tenson (ethnic conflict) period, Malaitans – including Kwara‘ae
villagers – are reasserting their central cultural identity and the value of their
indigenous language(s) and knowledge(s).

Language-­in-Education Policy and Epistemology in a

Postcolonial Era
Since the 1990s, language policy research and practice have shifted to examin-
ing ideology, power, and inequality, recognizing that “multiple theories and
models are necessary to explain educational phenomena and interventions in
different contexts” (Zakharia, 2008). As Ricento (2007, p. 10) pointed out, the
complexity of issues precludes the possibility of an “overarching theory” of lan-
guage policy and planning. Instead, Luke (2005, p. xvii) has argued that solu-
tions for education need to be “blended, hybrid and laminated,” as people
attempt the “forging of new social contracts and cohesions [toward] sustainable
and equitable patterns” of education and development that counter neoliberal
economic globalization:

My point is that the complex and contradictory push/pull demands upon

governance and education in postcolonial and globalizing conditions may
require very edgy hybrid blends of policy and practice, curriculum, and
pedagogy that do not jump out of the pages of canonical postcolonial
theory and do not sit well on the academic whiteboards of linguists and
anthropologists, much less the wish lists of senior systems bureaucrats.

Tollefson (2006) laid out theoretical expectations for truly critical language
policy research that examines how policymakers “promote the interests of dom-
inant groups” (p. 42), which, in Pennycook’s (2006) phrasing, “draws attention
to much more localized and often contradictory operations of power” (p. 65).
Attention to what is happening locally is crucial, because, as Johnson (2009)
pointed out, even with restrictive language policies, “implementational spaces
in the policy texts, and ideological spaces in schools and communities” (p. 155;
The Critical Villager Revisited   235

italics removed), open ways for challenging dominant educational discourses.

How much more are spaces potentially opened in a national crisis that disrupts
ordinary lines of authority and communication, and undermines the taken-­for-
granted workings of social institutions? Under such conditions, decision making
may necessarily shift away from national ministries and bureaus.
Addressing social change in a postcolonial “Third World,” Luke (2005)
wrote of the challenge to conventional educational practices and assumptions
about the “educated person” resulting from the impact of globalization on local
economies and the emergence of mass cultures. Nationally and locally, “new
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critical and contingent relationships” are being formed, as participants “suture

together answers, however provisional and local, on a daily basis” (p. xviii). We
agree with Luke that “postpostcolonial educational studies” should focus on
micro- rather than macro-­level policy – that is, on the work of teachers, stu-
dents, and others in educational systems as the ones who are “suturing together”
answers. We would add parents and members of the community to Luke’s list.
In the Kwara‘ae case, parents and other rural villagers with little formal school-
ing are essential agents in the process, drawing on their indigenous resources,
especially epistemological and pedagogical discourses.
We have argued that in the postcolonial world, marginalized peoples are
“producing socially situated knowledge that addresses local problems, using . . .
indigenous epistemologies” and indigenous critical praxis (Gegeo & Watson-­
Gegeo, 2001, p.  79) rather than Western epistemologies. Indigenous epi-
stemology refers to “a cultural group’s ways of thinking and of creating,
reformulating, and theorizing about knowledge via traditional discourses and
media of communication, anchoring the truth of the discourse in culture”
(Gegeo & Watson-­Gegeo, 2001, p. 58; also see Gegeo, 1994, 1998; Gegeo &
Watson-­Gegeo, 2002b; Watson-­Gegeo & Gegeo, 1999a, 2004). Indigenous
epistemology has emerged as an important research focus of indigenous and
native scholars over the past two decades (Grande, 2004; Meyer, 2003; Nabobo-
­Baba, 2006; Pollard, 2006; Pulitano, 2003; Sadler, 2008; Smith, 1999; Zulu,
2006).
Indigenous critical praxis “refers to people’s own critical reflection on
culture, history, knowledge, politics, economics, and the sociopolitical contexts
in which they are living . . . [and then] taking the next step to act on these crit-
ical reflections” (Gegeo & Watson-­Gegeo, 2001, p.  59). It is indigenous epi-
stemology and indigenous critical praxis that are at the heart of Kwara‘ae
responses to the Tenson and its aftermath.

The Ethnic Tenson: Causes and Incidents1

With a population of about 500,000, Solomon Islands (hereafter SI) consists of
hundreds of small and six large islands arched across a thousand miles of open
ocean in the southwest Pacific. Malaita and Guadalcanal (which constitute half
236   D. W. Gegeo and K. A. Watson-Gegeo

the SI population) sit parallel to each other, and historically have enjoyed good
ethnic relationships and cultural ties. In rural Malaita, most people continue to
live in houses of leaf-­thatch or iron-­roofed wood, without electricity or running
water, supporting themselves by subsistence gardening and selling produce in
local markets.
When SI achieved independence in 1978, 95% of its population lived in
rural villages. Today that percentage has dropped to 80–85%, largely as a result
of national development policies that have essentially ignored rural areas. For
decades, the national government focused on urban development in Honiara,
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and on large-­scale plantation development, particularly on Guadalcanal

(Solomon Islands Government, 1985). Most of the labor for development,
however, came from Malaita, regarded by successive governments from colonial
times as “resource poor” except as a source of dependable, hard-­working labor-
ers who could be recruited for off-­island development (Bennett, 1987; Moore,
1985, 2007). From the 1960s, lack of rural development led to a substantial
rural-­to-urban drift of islanders seeking employment, the majority of whom
came from Malaita. As the most populous (35% of the national population) and
least developed (7% of national employment; Kabutaulaka, 2002) of the six
major islands, Malaita is known for its difficult living conditions, high birth rate,
and high poverty rate (UNICEF, 1993, 2006). In a pattern of “circular migra-
tion” (Chapman, 1995), youth and men typically migrate off-­island to work for
a few years before returning home to marry. However, land pressure and
poverty on Malaita gradually has led many migrants to settle permanently on
Guadalcanal.
The result has been a population explosion in Honiara. In fact, by the late
1990s nearly 20% of Solomon Islanders lived in urban and peri-­urban areas
throughout SI. By 1998, thousands of Malaitans, many of them unemployed,
were living in squatter settlements near Honiara. Moreover, a large number had
been living on Guadalcanal for two or more generations, having married into
Guale families, bought land, established businesses, or become permanent resi-
dents in squatter settlements.
The causes of the Tenson were many, with roots in colonialism, globaliza-
tion, and neoliberal economics. The underlying problems had been simmering
for years: frustration among rural Guales with the continuing expansion of peri-­
urban Honiara and oil palm plantations into traditionally held lands, disrespect
for indigenous Guales’ cultural practices by squatters, discomfort with increasing
environmental damage from plantations and the newly established gold mine,
and the legitimate sense that Guadalcanal’s resources were being taken by cor-
porations without fair payment (Fraenkel, 2004; Kabutaulaka, 2000; Moore,
2004, 2008). Because of Malaitans’ proportionately large numbers, resentment
of these changing social conditions coalesced against Malaitan immigrants rather
than against corrupt government and corporate powers that were exploiting the
islands. That was to the advantage of business interests and local provincial
The Critical Villager Revisited   237

leadership, who encouraged Guale frustrations to focus on ethnic resentment

against Malaitans as the most numerous and visible migrant population.
The Tenson and its aftermath have been carefully detailed by Moore (2004)
and Kabutaulaka (2002). Here we greatly condense complex events to sketch
the background to the impact of the Tenson on Malaita, especially in West
Kwara‘ae, where we work. Beginning in late 1998, Guale “militants” (the
term used by government and the media) raided the homes of Malaitan set-
tlers in rural areas during the middle of the night, beating or killing men and
sometimes killing, raping, or kidnapping family members as well; taking all
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the family’s possessions and money; burning down houses, and driving
Malaitans out. Those able to escape ran a gauntlet of possible attacks on their
long journey by foot or bus to Honiara, where they sought help. By the end
of the year, various Guale militant groups joined together as the Isatabu
Freedom Movement (IFM; Isatabu is the indigenous name of Guadalcanal).
At its height, the IFM included 500–2,000 indigenous Guales from rural areas,
many of whom were child soldiers (12–18 years old) (Amnesty International,
2000). They were armed with traditional weapons, remade World War II
rifles, and stolen police guns. Many took on traditional dress and religious
practices.
The lack of response at first from Malaitans surprised and emboldened Guale
militants. Historically, Malaitans have had a reputation for being physically
strong, aggressive, and fearsome fighters. The IFM ridiculed Malaitans, and
began to move toward Honiara, which soon was inhabited only by the govern-
ment, urban businesses, and thousands of Malaitans on their way “back” to
Malaita. Most urban Guales fled into the interior to avoid the IFM, who also
attacked Guale villages, and many migrants from other islands also left.
Malaitan silence came for two reasons. First, many acknowledged that the
Guales had a right to defend their land, and some were embarrassed by the
known violations of Guale kastom (custom, tradition) by Malaitans. “Wouldn’t
we do the same if it happened to us?” was a theme in Malaitan discourse. But as
the violence continued and became more severe throughout 1999 and into early
2000, Malaitans organized in secret. Part of the Malaita-­wide indigenous epi-
stemology of warfare is that a Malaitan will say to an enemy, “Go ahead, go as
far as you want to, we will wait to see if you calm down on your own. But if
you go too far, then we will strike back hard.” The Malaita Eagle Force (MEF;
the eagle symbolizes Malaita) was formed, consisting of 150–300 members in
military guerrilla-­style uniforms with automatic weapons purchased from foreign
interests. As the MEF secretly trained on Malaita, the mass back-­migration con-
tinued from Honiara to Malaita by ferry. A series of IFM raids and shootings
targeted at Malaitan students at national secondary schools outside Honiara
resulted in Malaitan students being evacuated to Honiara, where their parents
came by ferry to retrieve them. In total, at least 20,000 Malaitans left Guadal­
canal within a few months during the period 1998–2000.
238   D. W. Gegeo and K. A. Watson-Gegeo

In early June 2000, the MEF struck, arriving by boat and rapidly seizing
Honiara in an armed but mostly peaceful coup supported by the police (whose
membership was half Malaitan; many Guale policemen then joined the IFM).
The MEF set a perimeter around the town to protect it from IFM sabotage and
attacks; by this time, the IFM had cut communications lines to Auki, had cut
off the water supply to Honiara, and were threatening to blow up fuel tanks at
Honiara harbor. The MEF also placed the current prime minister – a Malaitan –
under house arrest for failure to protect Malaitan families and business interests.
They ordered Parliament to elect a new prime minister. The MEF were not
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interested in a permanent coup or in ruling SI. However, even after a new PM

was elected and the MEF gave up control of Honiara, peace negotiations
repeatedly failed, violence continued on all sides, and crime rates rose. SI was
close to anarchy despite the efforts of many in civil society, including women’s
groups, respected elders and chiefs, churches, community organizations, NGOs,
and both traditional and elected leaders (Hurly, 2001).
An uneasy peace was finally restored with the 2003–2007 intervention of the
Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), established by Aus-
tralia and its regional partners. A quasi-­military peacekeeping force concerned
with law and order and retributive justice, RAMSI did not promote positive
development and strengthening of SI leadership – the greatest long-­term needs
in SI if stability were to be achieved (Sanga, 2003). Moreover, because it dic-
tated events, RAMSI created local resentment through its failure to understand
SI cultural expectations and practices, and the inappropriate (and sometimes
immoral) behavior of its members. As of this writing, RAMSI is still a strong
presence in SI.
The Tenson period severely affected the SI economy and the people’s sense
of security. With establishment of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate in
the 19th century, traditional warfare was banned, and until the Tenson period,
SI was known as a peaceful country, nicknamed the “happy isles.” A few people
owned guns for hunting, but since World War II no one had seen armed con-
flict. A national identity has never really emerged in SI (Kabutaulaka, 2004).
Western and Malaita provinces have each considered seceding to establish inde-
pendent countries; and studies were already under way in the late 1990s to con-
sider changing the government from the Westminster model to a federal model
that would give more autonomy to provinces as “states.”

Kwara‘ae Responses to Crisis: Villagers and Schools

The militants ordered us to leave the school [Selwyn]: “Only students
from other provinces can stay.” But they blocked the roads, and they
marched up and down. They fired on the school and we ran. My sister
and I tried to stay together. Our teachers helped us to escape by boat –
the Church of Melanesia sent two ships. We were taken to the mission
The Critical Villager Revisited   239

house in Honiara. It was hard, because we were crowded into a school

already full of students. We slept on the floor of the classrooms, food was
scarce, and few lessons. Then my father and his brother came on the ferry
from Malaita to take me and my sister back. They said, “We don’t want
you to stay. Even when your school opens again, it is too far from
Honiara and it isn’t safe. You must leave now.” My sister and I were very
sad. My grandfather died believing we would go to university and lift the
family up [out of poverty], but this was the end of our chance.
( John O‘ota‘a, rural villager, 2008)
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In 2000, there were few provincial vocational and no academic secondary

schools on Malaita. University-­bound Malaitan students, who were already dis-
criminated against in secondary placements on the basis of ethnicity, were most
often sent to Guadalcanal to study at one of the three academic secondary
schools there. The IFM’s attack on Selwyn College – the Church of Melanesia’s
prestigious secondary school a few miles outside Honiara – closed the school for
more than a year, and most of its Malaitan students were permanently repatri-
ated to their home island.
The impact of the ethnic conflict on Guadalcanal was felt across all social
institutions and in people’s personal lives on Malaita. The flood of families and
students to Malaita created multiple social problems that grew in complexity
during the years of the peace process. Hardest hit was West Kwara‘ae (where
David grew up and where we work), along the Malaita Road that links Auki,
the provincial capital and main urban area, to the far north of the island. The
crime rate soared in Auki as the population doubled and trebled overnight, with
severe shortages of housing, food, and medical supplies. Auki and nearby vil-
lages were suddenly beset by violent fist-­fights, drugs, kwaso2 and alcohol abuse,
sexual affairs and other problems that village people associated with “town life”
and behavior in Honiara, not rural Malaita. Some men and youth who fought
as members of the MEF returned with guns with which they terrorized villages,
and committed armed theft and other crimes.
When the IFM cut the communications lines to Malaita, for a considerable
time people could not use the public telephone in Auki to arrange to contact
relatives still on Guadalcanal, and Malaita Province could not easily communic-
ate with the national government. In such isolation, rumors spread that the IFM
was going to invade Malaita, adding to people’s uncertainty. Migrants and resi-
dents alike were traumatized by the events on Guadalcanal that they or relatives
had suffered, and by the stories of violence, rape, and murder that migrants told.
Stress from trauma contributed to epidemics that swept through the villages,
and to a wave of deaths that struck across generations, intensifying people’s
grief.
A major problem was migrants’ carelessness about the use of environmental
resources, and their building on choice pieces of fertile ground that owners of
240   D. W. Gegeo and K. A. Watson-Gegeo

communally held land were saving for future garden needs. Such behavior,
tolerated because of the emergency situation in which migrants arrived, never-
theless violated cultural practices. Villagers were aware that back-­migrants were
taking advantage of the lawless situation on Malaita after the Tenson as well.
Erecting houses on fertile land was a threat to villagers’ long-­term food security
on an island where arable land is increasingly scarce.
Migrants’ behavior, actions, and misunderstandings of village life caused
many disputes. In ala‘anga ki (village meetings), migrants were ignorant of the
discourse (described in Gegeo & Watson-­Gegeo, 2001) used to settle disputes
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and discuss village issues. Instead, migrants copied strategies used by the govern-
ment and other organizations on Guadalcanal in trying to end the Tenson in
what was incorrectly labeled a “kastom way” – by demanding and receiving
large amounts of compensation in pigs and cash. In the village context, com-
pensation or restitution is not routinely demanded or paid in disputes that can
be resolved by talking and other means. Back-­migrants not only possessed more
cash than villagers but demanded larger payments for real or imagined offenses.
In fact, heavy compensation demands also reflected the lawlessness of this
period, since courts were not functioning to stop excesses. Trauma, stress, dis-
putes, population pressure – “There was no babato‘o‘anga [stability, settling
down in one place peacefully] in the villages during the Tenson” ( John O‘ota‘a,
2011).
As the central government’s attention focused on how to bring peace, its
services outside Honiara were brought almost to a standstill. Malaita Province
and rural villagers were on their own in dealing with the problems of back-­
migration. At the village level, communities had to act because the province,
churches, and other organizations were dealing with issues of food, housing,
illness, and guns and crime in Auki.
One of the focuses in day-­long village meetings was what to do for youth
and children, including those who had returned from schools on Guadalcanal,
and migrants from Honiara whose problems included alcoholism, marijuana
abuse, theft, refusal to participate in fa‘amanata‘anga sessions with adults, and
other cultural violations. Fa‘amanata‘anga has long played a key role in interact­
ively teaching children and youth cultural and behavioral values, reminding
adults of those values, resolving conflicts, and as a site for villagers to evolve
their own cultural practices. A Malaita-­wide social practice (under varying labels
depending on language variety), fa‘amanata‘anga is also a traditional site for
“formal” education in language and discourse. In rural villages, parents begin
engaging children as young as 18 months old in the event (Watson-­Gegeo &
Gegeo, 1986, 1990). The split between rural village families and back-­migrants
on the knowledge and use of this discourse event was a huge cultural divide.
With no employment on Malaita for back-­migrant youth, the first felt need
was schools to occupy children’s time and to prepare them for hoped-­for future
job opportunities, as well as to encourage recognition of the importance of
The Critical Villager Revisited   241

Western education and English in a globalized world. As an interim strategy,

existing primary schools added two grade levels to try to handle returning sec-
ondary students, although no appropriate teaching materials were available.
Communities in West Kwara‘ae organized to raise money and negotiate pro-
vincial government approval for establishing a vocational secondary school in
2000 at Kilusakwalo, one of several such schools built at that time. Although
the province could not offer financial support, West Kwara‘ae parents were able
to secure assistance from AusAID, Taiwan, and Japan, and parents provided
building materials and built the classrooms themselves. Many students formerly
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at an academic secondary on Guadalcanal enrolled, even though Kilusakwalo

secondary would not be a feeder school to university or the professions.
The proactive way in which parents took responsibility for setting up schools
and building them was a marked departure from the previous two decades. For
years, teachers complained that parents did not show up on days set aside for
cleaning the school grounds, repairing old buildings, and building new class-
rooms – tasks delegated to village parents by the province. Parents did not
attend school meetings, either. The Tenson changed parental attitudes. Malaita
villagers saw the Tenson as anti-­Malaitan, and responded, “All right, we’ll take
over”; everyone was willing to “do something.”
Nevertheless, local primary schools were overwhelmed with new students.
Classrooms jumped to 40–50 students each, in violation of the national govern-
ment policy of 28–30 students for Standards (Stds.) 4, 5 and 6 (approximately
US grades 4–6). Students were taught on a split schedule: one group from 8:00
am to noon, a second group from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. Students in Stds. 4, 5, and 6
also attended classes for half-­days on Saturday. Upper primary grades took no
school holidays. Untrained teachers were hired because of a shortage of teachers
(many trained teachers from other provinces left to attend to the needs of their
own province’s back-­migrations). A school committee was established to evalu-
ate untrained teachers for their qualifications and effectiveness, but, in practice,
evaluation usually “meant nothing” (as parents complained). An “untrained
teacher” is one without any teacher training, and often without having com-
pleted secondary school. In the SI system, secondary students must pass a
national examination at Form 3 (approximately US grade 9) with a high score
to continue in an academic rather than a vocational track; those who fail must
leave school. Some of the new teachers in lower grades on post-­Tenson Malaita
were students who had failed at Form 3. In the rush to fill vacant positions and
open new schools, anyone marginally literate might be hired to teach lower
grades.
Village parents also attempted to influence curriculum, as they had tried at
different times in the past. The national curriculum is mandated by the Ministry
of Education. For some years, national government language policy allowed the
first two or three grades to be taught in children’s first (indigenous) language if
the children and teacher all spoke the same language. Teachers at higher grades
242   D. W. Gegeo and K. A. Watson-Gegeo

were allowed to code-­switch as necessary but the language of instruction was

English, the official language of government, business, and schooling. However,
the lenient policy for indigenous language use at the lowest grades was revoked
in the 1990s (for purposes of national development, but also no doubt owing to
external influence; at this time in many countries, educational language policy
moved away from language rights and toward standardization and national lan-
guage exclusivity). Most teachers in Malaita village schools did code-­switch as
needed. With the back-­migration of several thousand children who spoke only
SI Pijin (the creole lingua franca), however, even less instruction was possible in
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Kwara‘ae. Village children were ridiculed and intimidated by the new students
who were native speakers of Pijin, already knew some English, disrespected the
Kwara‘ae language and spoke it poorly if at all, brought store-­bought rather
than local food to school (an overt demonstration of relative wealth and town
sophistication), and whose interactional style was dramatically different from
that of village children.
Nevertheless, galvanized into action when institutional structures were
unable to handle the demands of the Tenson, village parents in West Kwara‘ae
felt they had claimed ownership of the schools. In the past, schools were the
place to learn the knowledge of the ara‘i kwao (White people, Europeans), while
indigenous cultural knowledge was taught and learned in home and village con-
texts. Sporadic attempts (usually on the advice of outside consultants to the
Ministry of Education) had been made to include cultural materials, but these
were usually generalized and represented a “Solomon Islands” or “Melanesian”
version of culture, not the specific differences that actually exist throughout the
islands, much less throughout Malaita. Now, in the aftermath of the Tenson,
village parents realized that the back-­migration of urban and peri-­urban
Kwara‘ae families who lacked linguistic and cultural knowledge was undermin-
ing traditional education in family and village contexts. One topic taken up in
lengthy village meetings was the Kwara‘ae concept of an “educated person,”
and what that implied for schooling and for village teaching and learning. At
school meetings, worried that Kwara‘ae language and culture would be over-
whelmed by the newcomers, village parents and leaders argued strongly that
Kwara‘ae (or the relevant indigenous language; 10 are spoken on Malaita)
should be used as the medium of instruction in Stds. 1 and 2 on the grounds
that it is critically important for children to have a firm foundation in their
culture and language before they are taught European knowledge and English.
Areas of knowledge that they singled out included house building, canoe
making, gardening, and the indigenous language itself.
In making the argument for early education in the children’s indigenous lan-
guage and cultural skills, villagers were expressing a notion of “the educated
person” (Luke, 2005) different from that of the government. Villagers’ under-
standing of education and schooling had always differed from that of colonial
and postcolonial officials. The Kwara‘ae term sukulu‘anga (schooling) is derived
The Critical Villager Revisited   243

from sukulu (school). Sukulu was originally the term for “church” (a main
enticement for conversion to Christianity in the mission period was access to
literacy).
By the 1980s, villagers had begun to believe that the only knowledge that
counted in the globalizing world was “outsider knowledge,” and because out-
siders and elites disrespected and sometimes ridiculed villagers, many stopped
teaching their children all but the most basic life skills (gardening, etc.), leaving
the rest to the schools. That led to a shift in the meaning of the Kwara‘ae equiv-
alent of an “educated person.” An educated or knowledgeable person is referred
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to as ngwae/kini sa‘i ru, meaning “man (person)/woman who knows things.” In

the past, sa‘iru‘anga (knowledge) referred to learning from and with others in
ala‘anga (meeting, discussion) or fa‘amanata‘anga, as well as through experience
(Gegeo & Watson-­Gegeo, 1999). Today, it also means “educated by schools.”
However, the meaning of one very important term did not change as a result of
schooling. Liato‘o‘anga (wisdom, insight, enlightenment) is the ability to address
life and social issues with clarity. Liato‘o means “see keenly” (lia, “look,” to‘o,
“sharp, keen”); to‘o suggests a sharp knife, and also being “on target” as in accu-
rately shooting an arrow or throwing a spear. Wisdom along with knowledge is
the focus of fa‘amanata‘anga sessions. Wisdom is achieved rather than learned
intellectually, and Kwara‘ae do not regard it as learned through schooling.
Villagers recognize that in today’s world, literacy and Western education are
necessary for employment and to gain certain kinds of knowledge. At the same
time, many villagers are not literate, and in a subsistence economy success does
not depend on schooling. Villagers’ conception of the “educated person,”
therefore, is that although one can be a ngwae ali‘afu (complete person) without
schooling, schooling without cultural knowledge does not make one a “com-
plete person.” Today, villagers often confront candidates running for office in
the province or national government with “We want ngwae ali‘afu people in
office.” They also say this when it comes time to choose a new priest or pastor
for their parish or district.
Building new schools, and taking over more responsibility for them, led to
village parents revisiting the entire issue of education. Village chief George
Ming Buamae’s statement “I want our children to be ngwae ali‘afu ki [complete
human beings] firmly grounded in Kwara‘ae language before they learn other
things” challenges the goals of national schools in the Solomons, and Western
education generally. The goal of learning knowledge and achieving wisdom in
Kwara‘ae is ali‘afu‘anga, “living in a state of completeness” with regard to the
key cultural values, each one of which is a stative verb (a verb of condition or
being). The values include being loving, peaceful, gentle, stable or grounded,
welcoming, sharing without expectation of return, etc. – all of which are essen-
tial to restoring village peace and balance in the current post-­Tenson climate.
Ali‘afu‘anga also relates to a person’s kula (point, part, place) system. Each person
is seen as made up of a set of parts that include social, personal, emotional,
244   D. W. Gegeo and K. A. Watson-Gegeo

p­ sychological, and spiritual parts. These are investigated and analyzed in

fa‘amanata‘anga sessions when situations require behavioral change or resolution
of interpersonal issues (see Watson-­Gegeo & Gegeo, 1990). The most import-
ant cultural knowledge, as villagers understood, is encoded in the Kwara‘ae lan-
guage itself – in concepts like ali‘afu‘anga, the key cultural values, and the kula
system. When village parents asked that the early grades of school be taught in
Kwara‘ae, therefore, they were critiquing what they saw as a narrow kind of
education provided by schooling, education that did not result in an “educated
person.” In their view, school knowledge is incomplete and limited to certain
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intellectual information. The provincial and national government denied the

parents’ request. Parents and teachers then proposed a kastom class, but that
request was also denied even though elders were available and willing to teach
it for free. The debate continued for several years. As of this writing, several
contiguous West Kwara‘ae villages are in the process of developing a village-­
situated weekly culture class for children in their area.

The Kwara‘ae Response to Crisis: Cultural Projects

The schools were not the only arena in which villagers were active after the
Tenson. Many local and back-­migrant youth had already failed out of school, or
chose not to try to reenter schooling once on Malaita. Jobs in the cash economy
were severely limited, however. Traumatized, discouraged, seeing little future
for themselves, many youth returned to subsistence gardening and decided to
marry early in order to find love and security by starting their own families.
To help keep male youth occupied and out of trouble, adults and elders organ-
ized various cultural performance groups and sports teams that continue today.
Examples included clubs that learned and performed the mao, an important and
exciting male dance, and bamboo music bands. Dance clubs and bamboo bands
were sites of non-­school education and promotion of local identity and self-­esteem.
Club and band members were required to make their own costumes, musical
instruments, dance objects, and face paintings, in addition to learning dance steps
or how to play elaborate bamboo instruments at a professional level. Teaching the
youth and performing with the club required a large time commitment for both
adults and youth, especially in order to compete in events sponsored by the prov-
ince or local villages. Participants ranged from young boys to young men, with
experienced young men and elders as teachers. In this way, villagers hoped to
model expertise and discipline, and to encourage island identity and pride in
Malaita heritage, which was seen as under attack by the events of the Tenson.
In our original “critical villager” chapter, we described the Kwara‘ae Gene­
alogy Project (KGP), which began in 1994, just four years before the Tenson
erupted. The KGP involved a cross-­generational group from several West
Kwara‘ae villages conducting their own research on Kwara‘ae language and
culture, with the aim of recording and transcribing interviews and discussions,
The Critical Villager Revisited   245

and writing a book on falafala or kastom. During the four years of its existence,
we received many letter-­tapes from the group describing their work and reflect-
ing on what they were learning by doing it. They used terms such as empower-
ment (fa‘angasingasi‘anga), intellectual enlightenment (mā‘ifi‘anga), and thinking
in depth (manatalalo‘anga) to characterize how their use of indigenous epistemo-
logical analytic strategies was “opening our eyes” to their own culture and to
the world. But the project was suddenly halted when the Tenson began, and it
seemed as though the new changes that back-­migration caused would preclude
the project from ever restarting. One fallout from the Tenson was a serious
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decline in the SI economy and a high inflation rate, such that villagers were
poorer than ever and had little time to take on non-­economic activities.
West Kwara‘ae villagers had not forgotten their project, however. In June
2009, a week-­long event was held in Buma village (known for its continuance
of arts and dance) to launch a new project based on prior efforts. The event was
attended by chiefs, elders, adults, and children from all over Kwara‘ae, and also
from To‘abaita, Fataleka, and Kwaio, nearby cultural areas whose chiefs stated
that “we all come from you [Kwara‘ae] anyway.”
The retired head of the SI National Museum, Lawrence Foanaota, OBE,
from To‘abaita, gave the keynote address. His high-­profile participation under-
lined the importance of the event. A successful week of workshops, lectures,
and traditional performances followed, all focused on falafala or kastom. One of
the organizers, in reporting the event to us by telephone, stated:

The new project is not about money, it’s about what we can do on our
own. What better place than to start with falafala? We want falafala to be
the leading concept, not money. This is not another outside-­inspired
development project. Rather, we want to ta‘ea Kwara‘ae falafala [uplift
Kwara‘ae culture] in order to fa‘afaolo [renew] it. This project saka ma‘i
māna [emerges from our own hand].
(Augustine Maelefaka, rural villager, 2009)

Saka ma‘i māna, or fa‘asi limana ngwae (from out of a person’s hand), is an
important concept in the indigenous Kwara‘ae view of “development” as a
process that is alive and fits the environment and people. Such development
meets people’s needs and is within their horizon of reach (Gegeo & Watson-­
Gegeo, 2002b). At the week-­long event, the project’s name was changed to the
“Ailako Cultural Project”; “Ailako” is the name of the original village on
Malaita when the island was first settled, several thousand years ago.
As of this writing, the project has been slowed by the further slump in the SI
economy with the global economic crisis of the past few years. However, some
individuals are working independently on collecting information from elders on
important concepts and discourse structures in Kwara‘ae language before these
are lost.
246   D. W. Gegeo and K. A. Watson-Gegeo

Discussion
If the federal form of government happens, or if Malaita has to go on its
own, or even if Kwara‘ae is on its own, we can do it, we are ready. We
feel we have what we need in this new cultural work to handle our own
future.
(Augustine Malelefaka, rural villager, 2009)

The Tenson brought many changes to SI as a country and to Malaita as a prov-

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ince. In general, the provinces are more autonomous now than before the con-
flict, partly because of legislative changes, and deliberate movement toward a
federal system. It is the larger provinces – Western, Guadalcanal, and Isabel –
that are pushing hardest for such a system, whereas smaller provinces recognize
that they are not capable of being on their own because their economies are too
small and their islands are resource-­poor.
On Malaita, the Tenson furthered talk about the need for Malaita Province to
“take over” development and social services (except for the national medical
service, which is largely underwritten by Australia). In keeping with Malaita-­
wide epistemology, islanders are silently working toward possible independence
without being publicly demonstrative. Malaita Province has been building rela-
tionships with other nations and international organizations, including, for
instance, establishing relations with Israel (using the claim that Malaitans are a
“lost tribe” of Israel). At the same time, Islam has established a foothold in West
Kwara‘ae on an island that was 98% Christian until recently. Malaita-­owned
capital formerly invested in Honiara or elsewhere has been transferred to devel-
opment on Malaita as some wealthy Malaitans have returned home to invest in
their own island communities. Auki, for instance, is developing rapidly, with
locally owned hotels and businesses, and a new market with economic assistance
from Japan. This quiet path of development involves the same strategy that
Malaitans pursued in the past in warfare.
The attempt to revitalize Malaita island cultural identities and languages
competes with the erosion of local indigenous languages in the face of back-­
migration of non-­indigenous language speakers, and rapidly expanding global
influences. During the Tenson, the IMF could shut down communication
between Auki and Honiara. Today, West Kwara‘ae villages still have no elec-
tricity or water, but villagers can buy relatively inexpensive pre-­paid cell phones
that are rechargeable for a fee in Auki. University students return home with
laptops, and the internet is available in some locations. In just a decade, a signi-
ficant loss of lexical, morphological, and phonological Kwara‘ae features has
become obvious in villagers’ speech, and discourse forms in high rhetoric are
used almost exclusively now by elders and are not being passed to many in the
younger generation. Yet local languages on Malaita, while they are rapidly
changing, are not likely to disappear in the next 60 years or so. What will be
The Critical Villager Revisited   247

lost are many concepts and grammatical distinctions, and thus much cultural
knowledge embedded in linguistic forms. This is why the work being under-
taken now by villagers to record their language and culture is so important, a
case of what the Native American poet Ortiz has called native peoples’ commit-
ment to “indigenous continuance” (Brill de Ramírez & Lucero, 2009; Ortiz,
2002).

Conclusion
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All the years of struggle and suffering, during the Tenson and after. All the
deaths that happened along the way. Our determination to create a better
future was not dimmed. We villagers continue to feed ourselves with the
work of our hands. We will endure.
(George Ming Buamae, rural village chief, 2008)

In May 2011, a group of Malaitans announced the formation of a new move-

ment in Auki called “Eagles Nest,” carefully dissociating it from the MEF. Misi-
tana, the spokesman for the movement, stated that the objective is “to protect
the rights of indigenous Malaitans in the province,” with regard to giving indi-
genous Malaitans priority in business ventures. He emphasized (quoted in
Solomon Star, May 19, 2011) that

Eagles Nest is a group that will soon rise to protect the rights of our future
generations. But we will do it according to the law without any blood-
shed or whatever . . . [Our name] simply means we (eagles) are living in
our province (nest) and we are protecting our eggs (future generations)
from outsiders who are trying to take away what belongs to us.

Misitana was referring to off-­islanders and international corporate interests that

want to initiate large-­scale economic development of Malaita’s limited land,
timber, mineral, and seafood resources. The group particularly opposes the
kinds of corruption characteristic of development and the political process in
Honiara and the national government.
Widespread corruption in the national government is thus one factor in the
formation of the Malaita Eagles Nest, and is a major topic of discussion in rural
villages. It is also why many scholars and commentators refer to Solomon Islands
these days as a “weak state” at best, and more typically a “failed state” (Allard,
2003; Kabutaulaka, 2002, 2004; Moore, 2008; Roughan, 2002). Just as Britain
failed to prepare Solomon Islands’ political culture for citizenship and national
governance, Australia and RAMSI – which metaphorically represent the Solo-
mons situation as part of the West’s “war on terrorism” – are engaged in
“nation-­building lite,” the apt phrase applied by Fareed Zakaria (2001) to
American efforts to “restabilize” Afghanistan.
248   D. W. Gegeo and K. A. Watson-Gegeo

Although the future is unknown, it is clear to most Solomon Islanders that

RAMSI still has a role to play in the present as the nation tries to sort out a
new vision for itself. One thing that is clear to us, however, is that in contrast
to 20 years ago, rural villagers on Malaita are looking more and more to local
solutions rather than relying on government to rescue or assist them. Some of
their solutions may not fit outsider or researcher expectations, as Luke (2005,
p.  xvii) suggested by his metaphor of “blended, hybrid, and laminated”
approaches to problems. Postcolonial rural Malaita villagers may struggle in
their own ways to maintain or recreate their indigenous identity, cultural prac-
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tices, and language; to find a path to sustainable practices and development;

and to battle poverty and the vicissitudes of limited resources as they “suture”
together answers that work for them. As Chief Buamae eloquently stated,
however, so long as they can feed themselves through the work of their hands,
they will endure.

NOTES
1 In addition to the sources cited here, our summary of the Tenson draws on various
news stories and analysis pieces in Solomon Star, the independent national newspaper,
and various internet postings by Solomon Islanders over the years. Our descriptions of
events and reactions on Malaita draw on written and audiotaped letters and telephone
calls from villagers on the coastal plain from the period 1998–2011; on David’s ethno-
graphic observations and taped interviews conducted on trips to his village on Malaita
in July 2007 and December 2008; and on telephone interviews conducted in 2009 and
2011.
2 Kwaso is a local home-­brew with higher alcohol content than commercial alcoholic
beverages. It is made of mixed fruit, sugar and yeast heated on an open fire and fer-
mented (Garrett, 2011).

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PART VI

Language Policy and Social

Change
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The chapters in this part of the book examine the following critical issues: How
can indigenous peoples and other language minorities develop educational pol-
icies and programs that serve their social and linguistic needs, in the face of
significant pressures exerted by more powerful social and ethnolinguistic groups?
How are newly emerging conceptions of identity linked with language policies
in education? The first two chapters in this part extend the focus on indigenous
languages that began in Part V, with particular attention in this section to crea-
tive efforts to achieve “cultural continuance,” which refers to the struggle to
sustain linguistic and cultural communities in the face of sustained pressures
from hegemonic forces of assimilation. In Chapter 13, Teresa L. McCarty
presents the results of a major study of language and cultural revitalization in
Native North America. Her analysis examines the role of young people in lan-
guage reclamation efforts within the larger context of cultural continuance. She
particularly focuses on how youth manage the contradictory ideologies and dis-
courses that position their heritage language as central to their indigenous iden-
tity and yet also a major barrier to social and economic mobility.
In Chapter 14, Serafín M. Coronel-­Molina examines the impact of new
mass media and social media on language maintenance and revitalization of
Quechua and Aymara in the Andes region. In particular, he suggests that new
media offer new opportunities to support policy and planning for language doc-
umentation and revitalization. His catalogue of available media resources in
Quechua and Aymara points to the enormous potential for new approaches to
language education within the process of cultural continuance.
Chapter 15 offers an integrative summary of seven key themes of the book:
the close relationship between restrictive language policies and related policy
areas such as immigration; the paradoxical impact of globalization on language
policies in education; transformations in conceptions of “language,” “identity,”
and “language rights”; the complex role of diglossia in language maintenance
and revival; the importance of the legal framework for language policy; the
importance of community involvement in policymaking; and variable methods
in language policy research. In addition, the chapter examines the importance of
language policy in solving the challenges facing multilingual and multiethnic
states (which means virtually all states everywhere). Finally, the chapter argues
that language policies to extend democratic pluralism are crucial to efforts to
resolve the current crisis of democracy.
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13
LANGUAGE PLANNING AND
CULTURAL CONTINUANCE IN
NATIVE AMERICA
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Teresa L. McCarty

The very persistence of viable languages speaks immensely to the vitality of

Native life in the United States.
(Medicine, 2001, p. 52)

In the epigraph above, Lakota anthropologist, educator, and language rights

activist Beatrice Medicine speaks to the persistence of diverse Native American
communities despite centuries of genocidal policies intended to eradicate those
communities. It is within the “sociolinguistic nexus” of Native communities,
Medicine adds, that “[n]ative culture flourishes and exists despite generations of
pressure to change” (2001, pp. 51–52). This chapter explores that sociolinguistic
nexus, historically and today, drawing on theory and practice in the fields of
linguistic and educational anthropology, Indigenous studies, and critical applied
linguistics (Pennycook, 2001; Tollefson, 2002). From this interdisciplinary per-
spective, Indigenous efforts to retain “viable languages” are not merely or even
primarily a linguistic issue, but are part of a larger fight for what Acoma poet
and literary scholar Simon Ortiz (2002) calls “continuance” – a determined
resistance and collective will to sustain vital cultural communities. For more
than three centuries, schools and their medium-­of-instruction policies have
been the battleground in this struggle, and Native children, families, and com-
munities have been on the front line. This chapter presents a critical analysis of
these processes, focusing on language planning and policy (LPP) as a driver of
both cultural continuance and social change.
I begin with a discussion of the demolinguistic and sociohistorical context for
contemporary Native American LPP efforts, emphasizing tribal sovereignty and
self-­determination as the legal-­political foundation for those efforts. I illustrate
256   T. L. McCarty

the self-­determination movement simultaneously with Ortiz’s notion of contin-

uance, using the example of Indigenous community-­controlled schools. This is
followed by a discussion of a range of contemporary Native American LPP ini-
tiatives. One largely unexamined but critically important group of stakeholders
in all of this work is youth, and in the next section I explore recent Indigenous
youth language research. How do youth negotiate local and societal discourses
that simultaneously position their heritage language as essential to an “authen-
tic” Indigenous identity and as lacking mobility within global sociolinguistic
“scales” (Blommaert, 2010)? What influences their language choices? Finally, I
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consider the praxis dimensions of this work and its implications for “inviting
youth into” (McCarty & Wyman, 2009, p.  286) language planning aimed at
self-­determination and cultural continuance.
Throughout the analysis, I draw upon the theoretical framework of the New
Language Policy Studies – a critical-­theoretical approach influenced by the field
of anthropology, in which policy is viewed “not as disembodied text but as a
situated sociocultural process” (McCarty, Collins, & Hopson, 2011, p.  335).
Within this framework, language policy is conceptualized as both covert and
overt, de facto and de jure: “the complex of practices, ideologies, attitudes, and
formal and informal mechanisms that influence people’s language choices in
profound and pervasive everyday ways” (McCarty, 2011, p. xii). This is not to
dismiss the gravity of official, formal policy – indeed, it looms large in the
Native American case – but to analyze those policy processes in their
intermeshed local, national, and global contexts. What Hymes (1980) called eth-
nographic monitoring is a key aspect of this framework, “not as an appendage to
conventional analyses of formal policy-­as-text, but as the core epistemological,
theoretical, and value position from which language policy is understood”
(McCarty, Collins, & Hopson, 2011, p. 336). In keeping with Hymes’s activist
stance, critical ethnography is committed to social justice and “the people for
and with whom the ethnographic work [is] done” (Gilmore, cited in Horn-
berger, 2002, p.  2). The objective of the New Language Policy Studies is to
conceptualize LPP in new ways, and thereby to reimagine the possibilities for
linguistic diversity and educational equity.

The Demolinguistic and Sociohistorical Context1

“Counting” peoples and languages is problematic, not only because the sources are
suspect (see Krauss, 1998, on problems with census enumeration), but also because
the project of enumeration itself is an ideological one. As Hill (2002) points out,
“To census is an important gesture of power” (p. 127). I use the numbers in this
section with caution, then, in the interest of providing readers with a sense of the
cultural and linguistic heterogeneity that characterizes Native North America.
Native American people reside in every US state and territory, representing
more than 560 federally recognized tribes, 619 reservations and Alaska Native
Language Planning in Native America   257

villages, and 62 Native Hawaiian home lands (Snipp, 2002; US Census Bureau,
2001, p. 9). The most recently available US census data place the Native Ameri-
can population at nearly 6 million, including 4.9 million American Indians and
Alaska Natives (1.5% of the U.S. population) and 1,118,000 Native Hawaiians
and “other Pacific Islanders” (US Department of Health and Human Services,
2011). Nearly a third of all American Indians and Alaska Natives are under age
18 – reason in itself to attend closely to youth language practices and concerns.
The most populous American Indian nation is Cherokee, with more than
700,000 individuals who so identify (16% of the American Indian/Alaska Native
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population). With a population of about 300,000, the Navajo Nation is the

second most populous American Indian tribe and has the largest land base, with
a 27,000-square mile reservation spread across three southwestern states (US
Census Bureau, 2002, p.  8). Most American Indian and Alaska Native groups
are smaller geographically and numerically.
Of an estimated 300 languages indigenous to what is now the United States,
linguists estimate that 175 are still spoken. Every one of these languages is
endangered, with 90% spoken only by the parent generation and older (Krauss,
1998). In the 2000 census, for example, 72% of American Indians and Alaska
Natives five years of age or older reported speaking only English at home
(Ogunwole, 2006, p.  7). Most Native-­language speakers reside in Alaska and
the western United States, with Navajo claiming more heritage language speak-
ers (178,000) than all other American Indian and Alaska Native speech com-
munities combined (Benally & Viri, 2005; Krauss, 1998). Reflecting their
population size and distinct culture histories, most Native American languages
have many fewer speakers, and more than a third have only a handful of elderly
speakers. Eyak, for example, a language indigenous to what is now southern
Alaska, lost its last native speaker, Marie Smith Jones, in 2008.
Thus, LPP in 21st-century Native America is largely concerned with lan-
guage regenesis and teaching Indigenous languages as second languages to herit-
age language learners. The disturbing reality, however, is that even as more
Native American children enter school speaking English as a primary or sole
language, they continue to be stigmatized as “limited English proficient” and
placed in remedial programs. American Indian and Alaska Native students are as
much as 237% more likely not to graduate from high school than their White
counterparts (National Caucus of Native American State Legislators, 2008,
p.  14). Similar disparities are evident across virtually all measures of education
attainment (DeVoe, Darling-­Churchill, & Snyder, 2008).
As these data suggest, achieving linguistic justice in Native America is
integrally tied to achieving economic and social justice, self-­determination, and
education equity. Understanding these issues requires understanding the singular
relationship between Native American peoples and the US government. While
political incorporation into the US system has been different for diverse Ameri-
can Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians, all Native peoples in the
258   T. L. McCarty

United States share a legal-­political status that entails a singular “trust” relation-
ship with the federal government. From the first encounters between American
Indians and Euro-­Americans, the two groups operated on a government-­to-
government basis. Underpinning this relationship is the principle of tribal sover-
eignty: the “right of a people to self-­government, self-­determination, and
self-­education . . . [including] . . . linguistic and cultural expression according to
local languages and norms” (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006, p. 9). Tribal sover-
eignty predates the US Constitution but is also recognized by it and has been
codified in federal legislation, judicial rulings, and the various agencies charged
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with administering “Indian affairs” (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006; Snipp,

2002). The federal government has repeatedly violated its trust responsibilities.
Nonetheless, the trust relationship and tribal sovereignty remain the legal-­
political bedrock upon which Native American LPP initiatives are based.
Language education in and out of schools is central to both the trust relation-
ship and tribal sovereignty. Between 1779 and 1871, the federal government
signed more than 400 treaties with the American Indian tribes, of which 120
stipulated federal support for schools and teachers for Native students. From its
first forays into Indian education, however, the federal government enacted a
relentless policy of education for linguistic and cultural extinction (Adams,
1997): “Replace heritage languages with English; replace ‘paganism’ with Chris-
tianity; replace economic, political, social, legal, and aesthetic institutions”
(Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006, p.  4). Perhaps most telling is the title of the
legislation by which the federal government empowered itself to undertake
these goals: the 1819 Civilization Act gave the US government primary author-
ity for the schooling of Native students, signifying the ideological equation of
education with Whiteness and Anglo-­European “uplift.”
By the late 19th century, federal boarding schools, minutely “controlled
environment[s] where behavior and belief would be shaped by example and
instruction” (Lomawaima, 1994, p.  112), became the primary assimilation
mechanism. Whereas earlier mission schools, with their overweening aim of
Christianization by whatever means possible, often provided instruction in the
Indigenous language, prohibitions against speaking Native languages in the
boarding schools were harshly enforced. Accounts abound of children being
ridiculed, beaten, locked in closets, and having their mouths “washed” with
soap for speaking their mother tongue (Benally & Viri, 2005; McCarty, 2002;
Reyhner & Eder, 2004). These experiences left a legacy of distrust of main-
stream institutions by many Native people and, often, feelings of linguistic
ambivalence and shame. “All of us now inherit the legacy of this . . . genocidal
history,” Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer (1998) write of their experience with
Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian in southeast Alaska, “one component of which is
that the Native languages . . . are on the verge of extinction” (p. 60).
A seminal report by Lewis Meriam and his associates in 1928 brought the
boarding school abuses to the public eye, setting the stage for official policy
Language Planning in Native America   259

reform (Meriam et al., 1928). Under Commissioner of Indian Affairs John

Collier (1933–1945), the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) published the first
secular readers in Navajo, Lakota, and Hopi. According to Medicine (2001),
these materials “were welcome additions to the Christian hymnals and Bibles
that were . . . the main sources of our abilities to read our Native languages,”
and represented “the initial impact of bilingual and bicultural education for . . .
the Native population” (p. 50).
These gains atrophied under a subsequent federal policy to terminate the
tribal–federal trust relationship, a thinly disguised campaign to confiscate mil-
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lions of additional acres of Native lands (Adams, 1997). In 1969, the US Senate
published a scathing indictment of federal Indian education policy, citing school
dropout rates twice the national average and describing the federal treatment of
American Indians as a “national tragedy” (US Senate Special Subcommittee on
Indian Education, 1969, pp.  9, 21). The contemporaneous National Study of
Indian Education reported similar findings, noting that a majority of Native
American parents desired instruction in Indigenous languages for their children
(Fuchs & Havighurst, 1972).
One unintended consequence of the boarding school system was the forging
of an alliance of Native peoples from diverse tribal groups who grew up
together in the schools and who, in the context of the 1960s Civil Rights
Movement and the 1970s American Indian Movement,2 joined with tribal
leaders and activists to pressure the federal government for self-­determination.
Change had been precipitated by the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Topeka,
Kansas Board of Education ruling, which outlawed racial segregation in schools.
In response, the Johnson administration launched its metaphoric “War on
Poverty,” which came to fruition in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1964
Economic Opportunity Act, providing legal protection from racial discrimina-
tion and community development programs for the poor, respectively. At the
same time, the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) author-
ized programs to meet the “special needs” of poor children and children of
color, and the 1968 Bilingual Education Act (BEA) provided for school pro-
grams that used the children’s mother tongue while they learned English. In
1972, Congress passed the Indian Education Act, authorizing Native American
bilingual-­bicultural education programs, and in 1975 the Indian Self-­
determination and Education Assistance Act was passed, providing the legal
mechanism for tribes to operate their own schools and social services. Together,
these laws created new “ideological and implementational space” (Hornberger,
2006) for the exercise of Indigenous linguistic, cultural, and educational rights.
It is important to recognize that these changes did not occur because of
federal goodwill or enlightenment; as former director of the US Office of Indian
Education John Tippeconnic III emphasizes, the changes came about through
“the political wisdom and persistence of Indian educators, Indian institutions,
Indian organizations, [and] tribes” (1999, p. 37). In the words of Anita Pfeiffer
260   T. L. McCarty

(1993), a prominent Diné educator instrumental in effecting those changes

within the Navajo Nation, a fundamental paradigm shift was under way: what
had been unthinkable just a decade ago had become doable.
During the second half of the 20th century, these new opportunities came to
fruition in the form of Indigenous community-­controlled schools (McCarty,
1993, 2008). To illustrate these grassroots LPP processes, I draw on examples
from the Navajo Nation, where the first community-­controlled school was
established in 1966 in the small rural community of Rough Rock, Arizona.
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Self-­Determination and Continuance: The Example of Navajo

Community-­Controlled Schools
Situated in the Four Corners region of the US Southwest, the Navajo Nation
spreads over three states; its members comprise 7% of the American Indian/
Alaska Native population. Navajo is an Athabaskan language, a family of lan-
guages spoken from the circumpolar north to the US border with Mexico. In
the mid-­1960s, much of the Navajo Nation remained geographically isolated
from urban English-­speaking centers and predominately Navajo speaking, with
Spolsky’s (1975) Navajo Reading Study reporting 90% of 3,500 six-­year-olds
surveyed to be Navajo–English bilinguals or monolingual speakers of Navajo.
“[O]ur survey showed that over two-­thirds of the children would be in serious
trouble faced, as nearly all were, with a monolingual English teacher” (p. 348).
In this context, the Navajo Nation emerged as a center for the American
Indian community-­controlled school movement. The beginnings of that move-
ment took shape in the mid-­1960s in the reservation-­interior community of
Rough Rock, Arizona (population ca. 1,300). At the time, Rough Rock was
one of the most economically depressed areas in the United States, as families
struggled to recover from a devastating federal program that had seized and
destroyed family livestock herds and substantially reduced family land holdings
(McCarty, 2002). The newly established Rough Rock Demonstration School
entered this socioeconomic situation not as an autochthonous development but
as part of the apparatus of a then-­beneficent state. An offshoot of federal War
on Poverty programs, Tsé Chi’zhí Diné Bi’ólta’ (Rough Rock The People’s
[Navajos’] School), was founded through a unique contract between a locally
elected Navajo governing board, a tribally sanctioned Navajo board of trustees,
the BIA, and the US Office of Economic Opportunity.
From its inception, the school at Rough Rock was positioned as an agent of
social change and community empowerment. The privileging of Navajo in the
school curriculum was not simply intended to aid children in learning Navajo
and English, but constructed as a “terrain of knowledge and a field of possibil-
ities for community action” (Rivera, 1999, p.  485; see also Roessel, 1977).
Those possibilities were realized through such school-­sponsored programs as a
communal poultry farm, a student-­run greenhouse, a toy and furniture factory,
Language Planning in Native America   261

a Native arts and crafts program, and a program to prepare traditional ritual spe-
cialists. All of these programs employed community members and brought
elders and parents directly into the school (McCarty, 2002). “This is a
community-­oriented school,” Rough Rock’s co-­founder and first director,
Robert A. Roessel, Jr., stated emphatically shortly after the school opened in
1966. “In the past Indian schools have taken little interest in their communities,
but here we want to involve adults and teenagers, dropouts, and people who
have never been to school” (Roessel, cited in Conklin, 1967, p. 8).
Within a decade, six other Navajo communities had initiated community-­
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controlled schools. The immediate needs of all of these schools were bilingual-­
bicultural curriculum development and Native-­speaking teachers (McCarty,
2002; Spolsky, 1974). In 1967, Rough Rock established the Navajo Curricu-
lum Center, the first American Indian publishing house, which produced hun-
dreds of high-­quality bilingual-­bicultural materials in the decades that followed.
When Spolsky’s Navajo Reading Study concluded in 1975, it too had produced
dozens of children’s books and technical reports on Native American education,
simultaneously preparing a cadre of Navajo bilingual teachers. A consortium of
Navajo community-­controlled schools, including Rough Rock, established the
Native American Materials Development Center, which published a multi-­
grade series of Navajo language, science, and social studies texts still in use in
many Navajo schools. The newly created Navajo Division of Education pro-
vided university-­accredited courses at reservation schools and graduate training
for Navajo school administrators (Read, Spolsky, & Neundorf, 1975). Diné lin-
guist Irene Silentman, a key participant in these events, wrote this about the
grass roots LPP activities of that era: “I saw this as a time for the Native people
to renew their strengths, preserve their cultures and languages, and improve the
education of their children. . . . [This was] also a time of pan-­Indianism and reaf-
firming oneself as Indian” (Silentman, 1995, cited in McCarty, 2002,
pp. 120–121).
As the number of Navajo bilingual-­bicultural programs grew, evidence
mounted of their salutary academic outcomes, with two longitudinal studies
showing that Navajo-­speaking children who learned to read first in Navajo out-
performed comparable students in English-­only programs and surpassed their
own annual growth rates (Holm & Holm, 1990, 1995; Holm, 2006; McCarty,
2002; Rosier & Farella, 1976).
The successes of these schools fueled the community-­controlled school
movement, and by 2011 there were 122 such schools operating throughout the
United States. All offered some form of bilingual-­bicultural instruction. The
schools have not been without their problems or challenges; in particular, insuf-
ficient and inconsistent federal funding and contradictory bureaucratic require-
ments have constrained, even throttled, the self-­determination these schools
strive to achieve. Moreover, power relations at the intersection of the “lived
and inherited past” (Brill de Ramírez & Lucero, 2009, p. 13) create ideological
262   T. L. McCarty

dilemmas for the schools and communities they serve. Writing about similar
issues for Canadian First Nations peoples, Maliseet scholar Andrea Bear Nicholas
notes the “huge problem [of] community disinterest, or even opposition” to
bilingual-­bicultural education, the result of “massive indoctrination of past
decades that holds [that] bilingualism [is] useless and our languages have no
utility in the modern world” (2009, pp. 234–235). As Bear Nicholas and others
have noted, resisting and redirecting this opposition requires dialogic commun-
ity engagement and healing from the past. Hualapai educator Lucille Wataho-
migie (1995) describes this as “reverse brainwashing” – a process of
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“re-­educat[ing] our parents on the importance and priority of the values and
knowledge embodied in our culture” (p. 191).
Despite these challenges, the community-­controlled school movement was a
historic turning point – a counter-­hegemonic watershed that compelled respect
for and attention to the important role of Indigenous languages and cultures in
the education of Native students. This victory of linguistic, cultural, and educa-
tional rights led to “basic changes, not just of philosophy but of teachers and
[education] control” (Spolsky, 1974, p.  52). As Wayne Holm, a leader in the
Navajo community school movement, explained in an interview many years
later, “[N]ever again could educators justify why they were not attempting to
have community-­based curriculum” in Native American schools (Holm, cited
in McCarty 2002, p. xvi).

The Contemporary Sociolinguistic and Educational Landscape

While community-­controlled schooling has been a critical site for the exercise
of Indigenous self-­determination, schooling in and of itself is insufficient to
counter the larger forces that propel language shift (Hornberger, 2008). The
very fact that these transformations have been carried out in the historically alien
institution of the school makes them contentious, as it is easy for Indigenous
knowledge to be downplayed, distorted, or ignored in favor of English main-
stream pedagogies and content (cf. Rockwell & Gomes, 2009, p. 104). Further,
schooling in the Indigenous language is not always locally desirable or viable. In
light of these issues, Native communities have approached the project of lan-
guage reclamation in a variety of ways tailored to local circumstances, desires,
and needs. In the remainder of this section, I discuss a range of LPP efforts that
illustrate these varied approaches.
In California, the Master Apprentice Language Learning Program (MALLP)
brings together tribal, non-­governmental, and university partners to support a
one-­on-one “mentored learning approach . . . for people who may not have
access to classes but, instead, have access to a speaker” (Hinton, Vera, & Steele,
2002, p.  xiii). Fifty Native American languages are spoken in California, but
most have less than a dozen elderly speakers. In the MALLP, master speakers
(elders) and younger language learners work together for months and years at a
Language Planning in Native America   263

time, engaging in everyday activities such as cooking and gardening, where

communication in the Indigenous language can occur naturally and in context.
Based on “the theory that adults can learn language informally . . . from a native
speaker, and mainly by doing activities together in which the language is being
used,” a key rule is “NO ENGLISH!” (Hinton et al., 2002, pp. 3, 7). Accord-
ing to linguist and MALLP co-­founder Leanne Hinton (2001b), many appren-
tices have become conversationally proficient and the MALLP continues to
grow, with programs in place throughout North America (for a discussion, see
Hinton, 2001b, 2011; Hinton et al., 2002).
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Hawaiian immersion has been a model for combined school-, community-,

and family-­based language revitalization. Once a thriving Polynesian language,
by the 1970s Hawaiian had fewer than 50 child speakers (Wilson, Kamanā, &
Rawlins, 2006). In alliance with other Pacific Islanders (particularly the Māori
of Aotearoa/New Zealand), a “Hawaiian renaissance” took root with a strong
language revitalization component, resulting in recognition of Hawaiian as co-­
official with English in the State of Hawai‘i, and in the non-­profit ‘Aha Pūnana
Leo or “language nest” preschools (Warner 1999, 2001; Wilson & Kamanā,
2001, 2006). Supported by parentally paid tuition and parental labor, the pre-
schools enable children learning Hawaiian as a second language to learn through
a language immersion approach with fluent Hawaian speakers. The preschools
laid the foundation for Hawaiian-­medium education in the state’s public school
system. Today, some 2,000 Native Hawaiian students attend a coordinated set
of schools, beginning with the Pūnana Leo preschools and continuing through
Hawaiian-­medium elementary and secondary programs. The goal of the Hawai-
ian language movement is to produce graduates who “psychologically identify
Hawaiian as their dominant language and the one they will speak with peers
and their own children” (Wilson & Kawai‘ae‘a, 2007, p. 39). Hawaiian immer-
sion has “developed a whole generation of new speakers,” Hinton (2001a, p. 8)
notes, and has been an exemplar for other Native American communities.
For languages with no native speakers but with written and/or audio-­visual
documentation and a living heritage-­language community – what linguists call
“sleeping” or “dormant” languages (Hinton, 2001c; Leonard, 2008) – the
language-­planning goal is revival. Wôpanâak, an Algonquian language indigen-
ous to what is now the northeastern United States, is one such language. Also
called Wampanoag, Natick, and Massachusett, Wôpanâak lost its last native
speaker in 1908. The 3,000 Wôpanâak people of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, are
nonetheless implementing a bold language regeneration program. Using historic
Native-­language diaries, correspondence, legal documents, and the 1663 Eliot
Bible, the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (2010) seeks to “return
fluency to the Wampanoag Nation as a principal means of expression” (p. 2).
The project has credentialed two Wampanoag linguists, developed a 10,000-
word dictionary, and created a “no English” curriculum for learners of all ages
(Ash, Fermino, & Hale, 2001; Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project,
264   T. L. McCarty

2010). Importantly, these language learning resources are reserved for tribal
members only. “We are still on our ancestral land,” project co-­founder Jessie
Little Doe Baird points out. “We have survived and gained enough strength
once again to . . . reclaim what is ours [the Wôpanâak language] by sacred privi-
lege and right” (little doe, 2000, p. 3).
Finally, in Alaska, a region characterized by vast distances and remote Native
villages, community–university collaborations have been a major language plan-
ning strategy. For example, the Yup’ik Language Institute at the University of
Alaska in Fairbanks has developed a constellation of initiatives for “continuing
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our language” (Charles, 2005), including teacher preparation classes, language

teaching materials, and an intensive youth summer language program. Yup’ik
scholar-­practitioner Walkie Charles (2005) writes that these initiatives have lent
stronger meaning to Yup’ik self-­determination. “Unlike the English-­only legacy
of the past,” Charles emphasizes, “Yup’ik now belongs in the classroom where
it can be spoken, developed, and used in all of its richness” (p. 110).
These are but a few examples of a widespread movement in which language
revitalization drives the twin goals of cultural continuance and self-­
determination (for additional examples, see Hinton & Hale, 2001; Reyhner &
Lockard, 2009; Romero-­Little, 2010; Romero-­Little, Ortiz, McCarty, & Chen,
2011). At the local level, this movement is sometimes supported by official tribal
language policies that use “the existing educational system as a vehicle for the
language, whether it is restoring, retaining, or maintaining it” (Zepeda, 1990,
p. 249). Local efforts are in turn constituents of a growing network of Indigen-
ous language activists represented in such organizations as the Advocates for
Indigenous California Language Survival (http://www.aicls.org), the American
Indian Language Development Institute (http://aildi.arizona.edu), the Indigen-
ous Language Institute (http://www.ilinative.org), the National Alliance to Save
Native Languages (http://www.savenativelanguages.org), and the Stabilizing
Indigenous Languages Symposium (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/History.html).
Participants in these organizations were instrumental in crafting and securing
passage of the 1990/1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA), the only
official federal language policy in the United States. NALA affirms the federal
government’s responsibility to “preserve, protect, and promote the rights and
freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop” Native American
languages, including using those languages as media of instruction in schools
(NALA, 1990, sec. 104[1], [5]; Warhol, 2011). In 2006, NALA was augmented
by the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act (NALPA).
Named in honor of the late Tewa (Pueblo) elder and language activist Esther
Martinez, NALPA provides funds for language nest preschools, Native language
survival schools, teacher preparation, and materials development. As Warhol
(2011) points out, these policies blend top-­down and bottom-­up LPP processes,
reaffirming “the language rights of Native Americans as an expression of self-­
determination and sovereignty” (p. 281).
Language Planning in Native America   265

In all of these revitalization efforts, youth are arguably the most critical stake-
holders; after all, their language opportunities and choices will determine the
future of their heritage languages as well as their own experience of cultural
continuance. How are young people involved in these LPP efforts? How are
they responding to dynamic situations of language shift? These questions guide
a growing body of research on Indigenous youth and language revitalization
(see, for example, McCarty & Wyman, 2009). In the next section, I explore this
research, focusing on recent ethnographic studies with Native American
communities.
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Native American Youth and Language Revitalization Prospects

Although much has been written on language endangerment and revitalization,
studies from the perspectives of speakers themselves are still relatively rare (King
& Ganuza, 2005; for counter-­examples, see Kouritzin, 1999; Todeva & Cenoz,
2009). Even more rare are studies centered on youth. This section overviews
some of the more recent research in this area and then discusses in greater depth
the findings from one large-­scale ethnographic study of Native American youth
and language retention.
Working with the Chilcotin of central British Columbia, the linguist Clif-
ford Pye (1992) published one of the first studies of Native American youth
language practices. Pye argues that any analysis of language loss must also look
closely at language acquisition – specifically, the ways in which children “learn
to speak only one language even though two languages are present in their
environment” (p. 70). Chilcotin children at the time of Pye’s research were
raised “within earshot” of the Indigenous language, he reports (p. 80). A com-
bination of English-­only schooling, newly introduced television reception, and
the perceived subordinate status of Chilcotin vis-­à-vis English “tipped the
scales” against maintenance of the Chilcotin language (p. 77).
Diné scholar and children’s book author Evangeline Parsons-­Yazzie
(1996/1997) found similar factors at work in her investigation of the breakdown
of intergenerational language transmission among families living on the Navajo
Nation. Although all the children and youth in Parsons-­Yazzie’s study had
access to Navajo-­speaking family members and most had, minimally, receptive
abilities in Navajo, virtually all chose English to respond to adults’ initiations in
Navajo. Younger family members “just preferred to speak English and the adults
were not persistent in responding in Navajo” – a factor Parsons-­Yazzie relates
to parents’ feelings of linguistic shame emanating from their own schooling
experiences (pp.  60, 64). Writing about these findings a decade later, Holm
points out, “In these and many other ways, young children set the language
policy of the home” (2006, p. 7).
Children and youth “setting the language policy of the home” is an increas-
ingly common theme in examinations of language shift; under duress or social
266   T. L. McCarty

pressure, the decision to abandon a heritage language is often made by the

youngest speakers, who in turn influence the language practices of adults (Har-
rison, 2007, p. 8). But, as recent youth research illustrates, even as young people
may be agents of language endangerment, when “their circumstances and
language-­learning opportunities change, youth . . . may still activate their herit-
age languages to productive levels and become the authorizing agents moving
their languages forward in the future” (McCarty & Wyman, 2009, p. 286).
Diné-Lakota scholar Tiffany Lee (2007, 2009), for example, explores youth
negotiations of “mixed messages” among Diné and Pueblo adolescents and
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young adults. Documenting ethnographically the competing ideologies of

Native-­language respect, stigmatization, and shame expressed by the youth and
present in their environment, Lee also posits a “critical Indigenous conscious-
ness” manifest in youth-­initiated community language advocacy, conscious
changes in family language policies, and the development of language-­learning
materials for younger relatives. “These young people are trying to make a dif-
ference,” Lee maintains; “reflecting a critical Indigenous consciousness, they are
asserting their agency in reversing language shift” (2009, p.  318). Wilson and
Kamanā (2009) note similar counter-­trends by Native Hawaiian youth who “are
becoming leaders in the Hawaiian language revitalization movement”
(p. 374).
Bielenberg (2002) and Nicholas (2009, 2011) studied the family, community,
and school-­based dynamics that influence Hopi youth’s language learning and
language practices. In both studies, youth indicated a desire to learn their herit-
age language, but they also expressed fear of being ridiculed for linguistic errors
– a common finding in youth language research. Nonetheless, like Lee’s find-
ings for Navajo youth, Nicholas (2009) argues that Hopi oral tradition – “song
words, prayer, teachings, ritual performances, religious ceremonies, and cultural
institutions” – gives rise to an emotional commitment to Hopi language and
cultural continuance (p. 333). Nicholas theorizes this as a process of “affective
enculturation” played out in the context of still-­vital Hopi cultural practices that
serve to reinforce a strong Hopi identity, including the desire to learn the herit-
age language among contemporary Hopi youth (2009, 2011).
Working in Alaska, Wyman (2004, 2009, 2012), documents similar sociolin-
guistic processes among two consecutive groups of Yup’ik adolescents who rep-
resented the first generation in which there was a marked shift from Yup’ik to
English language use: those known locally as the “last real speakers” and a
younger group identified as those just “getting by” (GB) in Yup’ik. Tracing
ethnographically the GB group’s “strategic moment-­to-moment emphasis or
erasure of language boundaries,” Wyman reveals the complicated and contra-
dictory workings of language ideology within youth peer culture. “Although
Yup’ik was . . . disappearing as a peer language among the GB group,” she says,
it “remained one of a set of markers of local belonging” used to create a distinct
peer culture (Wyman, 2004, pp. 255, 256).
Language Planning in Native America   267

Miami linguist Wesley Leonard describes a different but complementary situ-

ation for Miami, a “sleeping” language indigenous to the southern Great Lakes
region of what is now the Midwestern United States. In this study, Leonard
(2007) examined one family’s efforts to reclaim their heritage language through
the parents’ individual language-­learning efforts, wider tribal LPP initiatives, and
an explicit family language policy that stressed speaking whenever possible. In
this case, children in the family were increasingly immersed in situations inside
and outside the home in which the “Miami language and Miami-­ness are valued
and esteemed,” facilitating their bilingual development and social-­psychological
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identification as Miami (p. 223).

Each of these studies reveals interlaced micro, macro, and meso forces that
can accelerate or interrupt language shift among younger generations. In the
next section, I explore these processes in greater depth, drawing on findings
from a recently completed multi-­site study of American Indian youth language
competencies, ideologies, and practices in the southwestern United States.

Indigenous Youth Language Practices and Education: The Native

Language Shift and Retention Study
From 2001 to 2006, my co-­investigators (Mary Eunice Romero-­Little and
Ofelia Zepeda) and I embarked on a multi-­site, federally funded study to inves-
tigate the impact of shifting linguistic ecologies on Native American students’
language learning, identity formation, and academic achievement.3 The goal of
the study was to go beyond the grim statistics on language loss and to explore
the ways in which language shift and efforts to reclaim endangered Indigenous
languages are experienced in the “here and now of young people’s experience”
(Bucholtz, 2002, p.  532). When, where, and for what purposes do youth use
the Indigenous language? What is the nature of their communicative reper-
toires? What attitudes and ideologies do youth hold toward the Indigenous lan-
guage and English? How do these ideologies shape youth’s developing cultural,
linguistic, and academic identities? And finally, what can we learn from this
youth language research to inform and benefit Indigenous LPP efforts?
Throughout the study, we worked closely with five Indigenous communities
in the US Southwest. Our sites included ones in which intergenerational trans-
mission of the Native language was still taking place (albeit at a diminishing
rate), situations in which nearly all heritage language speakers were beyond
childbearing age, and cases in which there were only a few elderly Native-­
language speakers. Rural reservation and urban settings were represented among
the schools serving these communities, which together enrolled more than
2,000 Native students.
At each site, we worked closely with teams of Indigenous educators identi-
fied as community research collaborators (CRCs). The CRCs facilitated entrée
and access, validated the appropriateness of our research protocols, assisted with
268   T. L. McCarty

data collection, and participated in university-­accredited coursework on lan-

guage planning and ethnographic research methods. We employed an ethno-
graphic, case-­study approach, making 80 site visits over five years to collect
data, debrief and plan with the CRCs, and report back to tribal councils, school
boards, and other local stakeholders. Our data included demographic records,
observations of youth and adult language use in and out of school, student
achievement records, in-­depth ethnographic interviews with adults and youth
(212), and sociolinguistic questionnaires (500) designed to elicit language atti-
tudes, ideologies, and practices (for details on the study’s methodology, see
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McCarty, Romero-­Little, Warhol, & Zepeda, 2009; McCarty, Romero-­Little,

& Zepeda, 2006; Romero-­Little, McCarty, Warhol, & Zepeda, 2007).
Across the study sites, we found significant differences in youth and adult
perceptions of local linguistic ecologies and of youth language ideologies and
communicative repertoires. As we have reported elsewhere (McCarty et al.,
2006, 2009; McCarty, Romero-­Little, Warhol, & Zepeda, 2011; McCarty &
Zepeda, 2010), adults tended to characterize students’ home language environ-
ments and communicative repertoires in monoglossic terms – that is, as a more
or less uniform linguistic experience distributed across the speech community –
while youth described much more varied, heteroglossic linguistic ecologies.
“No one speaks [the Indigenous language],” one educator insisted, voicing an
opinion expressed by many adults in the study; youth “only speak English now”
(interview, January 23, 2003). Non-­Native educators in particular used meta-
phors such as “afterglow,” “remnants,” and “withering” to describe local Indi-
genous languages. At the same time, youth were often characterized as
“language-­delayed,” lacking ability in either the Native language or English – a
view reminiscent of what Martin-­Jones and Romaine (1986) call the “half-­
baked” theory of semilingualism. The pedagogical consequence of this subtrac-
tive view of young people’s language abilities was to intensify scripted English
reading instruction and to limit Indigenous language programs in school. At
some schools, Indigenous language instruction occupied only a half-­hour of the
weekly schedule and consisted largely of vocabulary drills. This in turn tended
to reinforce youth beliefs that their heritage language was, as one youth put it,
“just the past” (interview, May 5, 2004).
In contrast, youth described more dynamic sociolinguistic environments and
hybrid communicative repertoires. Virtually all youth reported being “overhear-
ers” of the community language – at home, at cultural events, and in some cases
on local radio broadcasts. Some youth spoke the Native language as a first lan-
guage, an ability they sometimes hid or denied in their interactions with Native-
­speaking adults. Some youth were learning to read and write their heritage
language through bilingual education programs at their schools. Although
English was the language most youth reported feeling “most comfortable”
speaking, a large majority also expressed the desire to learn and retain their her-
itage language. “For me, it’s important because it’s my language and . . . when I
Language Planning in Native America   269

speak the language, I think it makes me more [Native],” one youth stated
(interview, June 1, 2004). “I just want to learn my cultural language,” another
youth responded on the youth questionnaire. The ties between language and
identity were also evident in the contrasts youth drew between English and the
Indigenous language. As one teen reflected, “I really am speaking English
instead of my culture” (interview, June 1, 2004).
In these discourses, youth voiced concern about the future of their heritage
language. “Maintaining [my tribal language] is important,” one youth said,
“because the language is dying out” (interview, May 5, 2004). “[R]ight now,
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we’re losing it,” another youth reflected, “so it’s very important for me to learn
about it and to speak it” (interview, April 19, 2004).
Yet youth simultaneously expressed feelings of linguistic insecurity and shame,
linking this to racial discrimination and the physical and symbolic violence of colo-
nial schooling. “It’s being told that [the Indigenous language] is stupid . . . to speak
Indian is the way of the devil,” a 16-year-­old stated, describing the boarding school
experience his parents and grandparents endured. “You . . . forsake who you are,
you give up having to learn [the Indigenous language] in order to accommodate
the mainstream life” (interview, May 6, 2004). “Youth are judged by other people
that speak English more clear than they do,” another high school student said, “and
they just kind of feel dirty about the whole thing” (interview, May 5, 2004). As
suggested above, this led some youth to mask their Native-­language abilities from
both peers and adults. As the same high school student above stated, “[T]hey
[peers] put on a fake front and try to make people believe they speak more English
than [the Indigenous language]” (interview, May 5, 2004).
As we have described elsewhere (McCarty et al., 2009; McCarty, Romero-­
Little, Warhol, & Zepeda, 2011), virtually every message these youth receive –
from the language privileged in their print environment, media, and technology,
to overt and covert schooling practices that relegate Indigenous language learning
to simplistic vocabulary drills – conveys the subordinate status of Indigenous lan-
guages vis-­à-vis English. At the same time, youth are often positioned by parents
and other adults as the “focal point for social anxieties about the loss of community
languages” (McCarty & Wyman, 2009, p. 286). Youth take up these familial and
societal messages in different ways – resisting, accommodating, and sometimes
feeling compelled to “forsake who they are.” Within their peer groups and interac-
tions with adults, youth may feel reluctant to demonstrate their language abilities
or their interest as heritage language learners. The hybridity of their communica-
tive repertoires may also give rise to linguistic insecurities and to adults’ perceptions
that youth are indifferent to their heritage language. The net effect is to curtail
opportunities for rich, natural peer and child–adult interaction in the Indigenous
language, and to construct a de facto language policy in which, as Pye (1992)
described for Chilcotin, the Indigenous language is “better left unspoken” (p. 80).
This ethnographic research reveals the nuanced ways in which implicit lan-
guage policies are constructed by youth and adults in everyday social practice. It
270   T. L. McCarty

also shows the interweaving of these implicit policies with formal school pol-
icies and wider societal discourses that stigmatize Indigenous languages and their
speakers. By virtue of their ideological hegemony, implicit language policies are
“difficult to detect” (Shohamy, 2006, p. 50). Ethnographic monitoring (Hymes,
1980) serves to make visible the de facto policies that influence youth language
choices and practices.
Despite youth’s experiences with competing language ideologies (Lee, 2009),
this study, and studies by other youth researchers (e.g., Lee, 2007; Meek, 2007,
2010; Messing, 2009; Nicholas, 2011; Wyman, 2009, 2012), indicate that many
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youth are choosing to learn their heritage language as “an act of identity, of
belonging to a particular group” (Nettle & Romaine, 2000, p.  173). A key
aspect of this research is its praxis potential, as nuanced understandings of youth
language ideologies and practices based on ethnographic research suggest new
strategies for “inviting youth into” the LPP work of their communities and
schools (McCarty & Wyman, 2009, pp. 286–287). In the concluding section of
this chapter, I consider these broader research implications.

Cultural Continuance and the Future of Native American

Languages
Continuance . . . is life itself.
(Ortiz, 1992, p. 10)

I began this chapter with Medicine’s reflection on the persistence of Indigenous

languages as evidence of “the vitality of Native life” (2001, p. 52). For literary
scholar Ortiz, this persistence is captured in the notion of continuance – an
active engagement with cultural heritage “with a sense of something more than
memory or remembering at stake” (1992, p. 9). Applied to LPP, we can think
of continuance as the determined practice of repatriating Indigenous languages,
bringing them forward into new sociolinguistic domains. As Hornberger and
King noted more than a decade ago, “bringing the language forward” means
that Indigenous languages are often used and displayed in non-­traditional ways
but for Indigenous purposes (1996, p. 314).
Although they differ in their circumstances, the Indigenous LPP efforts
explored in this chapter suggest some of the ways in which Indigenous com-
munities are taking up this task. In some cases, schools have been appropriated
for language reclamation in concert with home and community support. In
other cases, language reclamation is seated more exclusively in family and com-
munity domains. Of significance in all of these efforts are the new language-­
learning pathways they open up for children and youth.
The ethnographic research discussed here suggests that these efforts are most
effective when the heteroglossic quality of learners’ home-­community environ-
ments and the hybridity of their communicative repertoires are acknowledged
Language Planning in Native America   271

and treated as resources rather than as signs of linguistic deficit. Equally import-
ant is the creation of opportunities for youth to use their heritage language in
personally meaningful and academically empowering ways. As Lee contends, “If
[the Indigenous language] is to attain status equal to English in school contexts,
it needs to be related to the world of today’s teenagers” (2007, p. 29). She cites
community-­based service learning projects as one strategy for achieving this.
Finally, Indigenous youth language research strongly suggests the need to
involve young people directly in community-­based language research, language
planning, and language decision-­making. As one youth participant in the Native
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Language Shift and Retention Study remarked, “This research . . . is really a
good thing. . . . [It’s] finding a way to bring the language back to the Native
people” (interview, May 5, 2004). This type of youth-­centered LPP work has
the potential to create dynamic new contexts for cultural continuance – speak-
ing “immensely,” as Beatrice Medicine (2001, p. 52) stated, “to the vitality of
Native life in the United States.”

NOTES
1 Parts of this section are adapted from McCarty (2012).
2 The American Indian Movement (AIM) began in the early 1970s as a force for pres-
suring the federal government to honor its treaty obligations toward tribes. In 1972,
AIM members marched to Washington, DC, presenting federal officials with a
20-point manifesto, The Trail of Broken Treaties, which called for the restoration of
American Indian lands, protection of Indian religious and cultural freedoms, reorgani-
zation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and improvements in health, housing, eco-
nomic development, and education (Wittstock & Salinas, n.d.).
3 The Native Language Shift and Retention Study was funded by the US Department of
Education Institute for Education Sciences. Mary Eunice Romero-­Little of Arizona State
University and Ofelia Zepeda of the University of Arizona were co-­principal investiga-
tors, with the author, on the grant; Larisa Warhol of Arizona State University served as
the project’s data manager and research assistant. We express our gratitude to the com-
munity research collaborators in this project and to other research assistants who greatly
facilitated this work. The data reported here are adapted from McCarty, Romero-­Little,
Warhol, and Zepeda (2009, 2011). At the request of the Internal Review Board that
sanctioned the study from 2005 to 2007, this disclaimer is provided: “All data, statements,
opinions, and conclusions or implications in this discussion of the study solely reflect the
view of the [researchers] and research participants, and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the funding agency, tribes or their tribal councils, the Arizona Board of Regents or
Arizona State University. This information is presented in the pursuit of academic
research and is published here solely for educational and research purposes.”

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14
NEW FUNCTIONAL DOMAINS OF
QUECHUA AND AYMARA

Mass Media and Social Media

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Serafín M. Coronel-­Molina

Traditional mass media – including print media – and the newer social media
have combined to greatly expand access to information and other forms of dis-
course in Quechua and Aymara both locally and globally. In the 21st century,
literacies in both traditional and emerging genres are presented through mass
and social media as performances, both written and oral, and more recently in
multimodal digital formats. Multimodal resources used as comprehensive and
innovative pedagogical tools are contributing effectively to the teaching and
learning of Quechua and Aymara as first and second languages. In this chapter, I
shall demonstrate how these new developments support language policy and
planning, specifically language revitalization and documentation of indigenous
languages in the Andes and beyond.
I shall use the frameworks of functional domains developed by Stewart (1968)
and Gadelii (1999) to describe the sociolinguistic landscape of Quechua and
Aymara. I shall also examine new functional domains of Quechua and Aymara rel-
ative to language policy and planning, and language revitalization and documenta-
tion. Finally, I shall provide information about multimedia and multimodal
resources, including traditional mass media such as newspapers, films, recordings,
radio, and television, and new media – including social media – such as electronic
games, blogs, virtual forums, Facebook, Google+, Skype, Twitter, and cell phones.
Also, I shall include information about current mass and social media adaptations,
translations, and recordings that are available in Quechua and Aymara.

Quechua and Aymara in the Andean Region

The Andean region is a multilingual, pluriethnic, and multicultural territory
comprising a dominant Spanish-­speaking society and numerous indigenous
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   279

populations speaking different languages. Of these, Quechua and Aymara are

the most widely spoken. According to the Atlas sociolingüístico de pueblos indígenas
de América Latina (2009, p.  517), there are 6,617,639 Quechua speakers and
2,488,924 Aymara speakers. However, other estimates put the number of
Quechua speakers as high as 10–13 million. Greater precision is difficult because
national censuses and other attempts to count Quechua and Aymara speakers
are not executed systematically across countries. A specifically linguistic census
in South America would more accurately quantify these numbers, but such an
initiative would require considerable time, effort, planning, and human and
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economic resources.
But why is this even necessary? The reason is that Quechua and Aymara are
considered endangered languages, despite their apparently high populations of
speakers. To understand this paradox, one must understand not only that both
languages have suffered from contact with Spanish for over 500 years, but also
that the linguistic diversity within the languages themselves may contribute to
their decline. Quechua, for example, is divided into two linguistic branches.
Quechua I, or Central Quechua, is found in the central part of Peru. Quechua
II, or Southern/Northern Quechua, intriguingly, surrounds Quechua I to the
north and south of Peru. Cerrón-Palomino (1987), Parker (1963), and Torero
(1964, 1974) have each independently distinguished more than 20 different dia-
lects divided between the two linguistic branches. These dialectal differences
have served over time to lead many Quechua speakers to observe speakers of
other dialects with suspicion or disdain. This intra-­Quechua prejudice has led to
a decline in the use of less widely spoken or prestigious varieties, and has served
to hinder status planning for Quechua as a whole.
The other major factor in the endangerment of Quechua and Aymara is their
contact with Spanish. Given the dominance of Spanish and colonial efforts to
impose this language on the Andean natives, countless indigenous languages
have already become extinct. I contend, however, that with careful language
planning, Quechua and Aymara do not need to become casualties too.
Language planning is typically divided into three subcategories: status,
corpus, and acquisition planning. Essentially, status planning deals with the
functional domains of a language or variety within a given society – that is, the
uses to which the speakers put the language. Corpus planning, for its part,
focuses on the form of the language: codifying, standardizing, or otherwise
changing the lexicon, the writing system, or discourse. Finally, acquisition plan-
ning concerns the users of a language; its most common ultimate goal is to
increase the number of speakers, and generally involves education in some way.

Domains of Language Use

Functional domains – a principal concern of status planning – are the different
social contexts in which a language is used on a daily basis. In general, the more
280   S. M. Coronel-Molina

public domains in which a language is used, the higher its status. There are
numerous paradigms that identify common functional domains, including spe-
cific analysis of Quechua in the Andes and beyond by Coronel-­Molina (1999a,
2005, 2007), Firestone (2006), Hornberger (1988), Hornberger and Coronel-­
Molina (2004), and Hornberger and King (2001). The two I have found most
useful for evaluating the status of Quechua and Aymara are Stewart’s (1968)
model and the UNESCO model (Gadelii, 1999). There is some overlap
between the two, so I offer a synthesis, eliminating redundant entries and
including some of my own that neither source listed:
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  1. Official use, in which the language in question is appropriate for political,

legal, and cultural purposes nationwide. This language is often specified in a
country’s Constitution; such is the case in the Andean nations. In the 1993
Political Constitution of Peru, for example, Quechua and Aymara both
hold official status, but only in specific regions of the country; in many
respects, however, this status is more symbolic than functional.
  2. Government use, which includes use of the language in written legislation, ses-
sions of parliament or assemblies, the promulgation of laws, public addresses
by government officials, and similar uses. Quechua and Aymara are uncom-
mon in this domain, and the few instances of it, again, are essentially symbolic;
for example, on the official website of the Congress of the Republic of Peru
(online). There is some instrumental government use of Quechua and
Aymara, for instance in certain official documents, and in the translation into
Quechua of the 1993 Peruvian Constitution (Chirinos Rivera, 1999).
  3. Legal/court judiciary use, which refers to the use of the language in the judi-
ciary system – that is, in the courts or in other legal actions, in legal pro-
nouncements or documents, etc. According to Peru’s Constitution and the
2003 National Languages Law (online), Quechua speakers in court have
the right to have the proceedings interpreted into Quechua, but the lan-
guage is not often found in written judicial documents. Quechua was also
used extensively during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Com-
mission (2001–2003) in Peru (http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/pagina01.
php). At the most fundamental level, constitutional recognition of the
validity of Quechua and Aymara lays the groundwork for other top-­down
efforts to improve the language’s status throughout the Andean countries.
Unfortunately, such constitutional recognition varies widely across the
region (Coronel-­Molina, 2011)
  4. Provincial use, which means widespread use of a language across a given
province, whether or not it is also an official language. Quechua and
Aymara fill this domain, as well as the fifth, which is related to it.
  5. Regional use involves a language used widely within a given region (e.g.,
rural versus urban in a given province). Again, Quechua and Aymara are
used as regional languages.
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   281

  6. Wider communication, in which a language is used as a medium of communi-

cation across linguistic boundaries within a nation. This category excludes
languages already recognized as official. Thus, Spanish cannot be termed
a language of wider communication in Peru today, because it is the official
language. Quechua during the conquest and colonization of Peru was a
language of wider communication, but it is no longer (see Cerrón-Palo-
mino, 1989; Coronel-­Molina, 2007; Mannheim, 1991).
  7. International use, wherein a language is used internationally as a major
medium of communication, e.g., for diplomatic relations, foreign trade,
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and tourism. English and Spanish are good examples of this; Quechua and
Aymara are not, although they are used among their own speakers across
national borders in the Andean nations, and at transnational level as well
(see Coronel-­Molina, 1999a).
  8. Business use, which includes, for example, advertising, tourism, administra-
tive announcements of businesses, package labeling, instruction manuals,
and commercial printed matter. It also includes signage, for example in
businesses, airports, and street signs, as well as language(s) used in the infor-
mal market sector. In this domain, there is a limited use of Quechua and
Aymara, such as in weekly markets and fairs. There is also some instrumen-
tal use of these languages by Spanish speakers, who must be able to speak
them to perform their jobs in regions inhabited by Quechua and Aymara
speakers (e.g., doctors, nurses, and teachers working in rural highland
areas).
  9. Capital use, which refers to a language used as a major medium of commu-
nication in and around the national capital. Quechua and Aymara are not
typically used in this domain. This use is closely related to the next one.
10. Administrative use, which refers not only to the administration of federal,
provincial, and municipal governments, but also to the administration of
other enterprises such as health care, the military, and police, and includes
both spoken and written language(s). In most contexts, this language is still
Spanish, although in rural medical posts some patient information pam-
phlets and radio health programs are available in Quechua and Aymara.
11. Group use, or the language used as the normal means of communication
among members of a single cultural or ethnic group or speech community.
This function includes language use in all domains within monolingual
communities, or only in certain domains in families, communities, or close-
­knit social networks in bilingual communities where perhaps the majority
of the public, administrative functions are fulfilled by the dominant lan-
guage. Quechua and Aymara still enjoy considerable group use regionally
throughout the Andes, especially in the rural highlands.
12. Education, which means the language used to teach at all levels of education,
from nursery school through universities, including language revitalization
programs, adult literacy programs, and the informal education sector.
282   S. M. Coronel-Molina

­ ilingual Intercultural Education (BIE), taught in the mother tongue of

B
each ethnic group, is reportedly now mandatory in Bolivia, Ecuador, and
Peru, and literacy classes are also offered in Quechua and Aymara in certain
regions (Albó, 1999; Coronel-­Molina, 2007; García, 2005; von Gleich,
2004; Hornberger, 1988; Hornberger & Coronel-­Molina, 2004; Horn-
berger & King, 2001; López, 2005; Zúñiga, Cano, & Gálvez, 2003).
13. School subject, which means the language is not the medium of communica-
tion for teaching, but rather is taught as a subject. Interestingly, Quechua
and Aymara are offered as school subjects not only in Andean countries at
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various levels but internationally as well, at the university level.

14. Literature and translation, which includes not only published literature but
also testimonial literature, theater, and music or songs. Quechua and
Aymara are slowly building a written literary tradition, either of original
literary works or of other literature translated into these languages; they
already possess quite an extensive musical tradition.
15. Religion, in which the language is intimately associated with the ritual(s) of
a particular religion. Quechua is used for some religious purposes (e.g.,
prayers, sermons, some indigenous ceremonies), and the Bible has even
been translated into various dialects of Quechua and Aymara, but neither
Quechua nor Aymara is exclusively associated with any religion.
16. Academic and social domains, which are distinct from education because the
language is not used for education per se, but rather for academic or profes-
sional purposes such as research publications, and academic and professional
conferences. It is also used in public celebrations, speeches, and related uses.
Quechua and Aymara have made some limited progress in this domain. For
examples of academic articles entirely in Quechua and Aymara, see
Coronel-­Molina (1999b), Huayhua Pari (1999), and Itier (1999).

It is clear that Quechua and Aymara do not maintain a visible presence in very
many functional domains. However, with the help of both old and new technol-
ogies, these languages are gaining ground in some already inhabited domains and
making new inroads into others, as the following discussion will show. At the
same time that this new growth contributes to increasing the status of both lan-
guages, it also makes contributions to the areas of both corpus planning (particu-
larly in the area of codification) and acquisition planning (language education).

Mass Media
In any language revitalization effort, the central role played by mass media
cannot be ignored. Obviously, formal education is important, but of equal or
perhaps even greater importance is for people to see that their language is
present on a daily basis in diverse social manifestations such as those available
through the Internet, films, documentaries, television and radio programs, and
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   283

all forms of print media, whether in paper or digital formats. Utilizing these
modes of communication can strengthen the status of indigenous languages and
contribute to both the awakening of pride and the modification of negative atti-
tudes on the part of both users and non-­users of these languages. Increasing lin-
guistic pride will to some degree help stimulate language preservation and
revitalization. To a limited extent, Quechua and Aymara are already finding
their way into mass media, particularly radio and the Internet (see Albó, 1998;
Coronel-­Molina, 2005; Firestone, 2006; von Gleich, 2004; Hornberger &
Coronel-­Molina, 2004; Hornberger & King, 2001).
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Newspapers and Magazines

Andean languages in mass media actually have an established history in the
region, with newspapers and radio being the most common media of mass com-
munication. Quechua and Aymara newspapers have existed in Bolivia since the
1970s. In 2000, the La Paz (Bolivia) daily Presencia initiated the inclusion in
every edition of a Quechua, Aymara, and Guarani centerfold section called
Kimsa Pacha, an innovative effort that contributes in some small measure to the
revitalization of these three languages.
There are numerous periodicals in Bolivia that are written at least partially in
indigenous languages (Albó, 1998). According to a recent report by the Observa-
torio Nacional de Medios (ONADEM) of the Fundación UNIR Bolivia, mass media
in Quechua and Aymara still occupy a marginal place in La Paz, El Alto, and
Cochabamba. In La Paz and El Alto, of 17 mass media sources utilizing Aymara,
11 are radio programs (65%), compared to 6 television channels (35%) offering
some programs or segments in Aymara. Of the 17, only 8 offer news in Aymara,
and then only during the early mornings, thus reducing accessibility for the
majority of the population. In Cochabamba, of the 10 mass media sources (8
radio programs, 1 television channel, and 1 newspaper), 6 (5 radio programs and
1 television channel) have some programming in Quechua, which again is
limited to the early morning hours (Poma Ulo, 2011).
Compared to the case of radio programming, however, there is a much
lower presence of Quechua and Aymara in the print media. Despite this, these
periodicals still contribute to revitalization. The articles that do appear in
Quechua and Aymara (and other indigenous languages) help to intellectualize
the language(s), extending the functional use of the languages into different
domains. As Albó (1998) notes, “Representan un esfuerzo notable hacia la pres-
encia y enriquecimiento de la lengua en áreas que hasta ahora la diglosia había
reservado al castellano” (p. 147) (“They represent a considerable effort for the
presence and enrichment of the language in areas that until now diglossia had
reserved for Spanish”) [translation mine].
The Centro de Comunicación y Desarrollo Andino de Bolivia promotes
Quechua through the publication in print and digital formats of its newspaper,
284   S. M. Coronel-Molina

Periódico Conosur Ñawpaqman. It was started in Bolivia in 1983, appears in

Quechua and Spanish, and is published twice a month for indigenous com-
munities and organizations locally and globally. It also contains special sections
called Suplemento Conosur Ñawpaqman and Suplemento Infantil Añaskito. The latter
section, devoted to children, is entirely in Quechua. Wiñay Kawsay is another
monthly newspaper, this time in Ecuadorean Quichua and Spanish, and written
and published by Radio Lluman.
There are also a few journals, magazines, and newsletters published in
Quechua and Aymara. The most prominent example is Revue Amerindia, which
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is published by the Centre d’Études de Langues Indigènes d’Amérique and

includes academic articles and literature written entirely in Amerindian lan-
guages. In 2011, the first edition of a colorful electronic magazine written
entirely in Cuzco Quechua appeared: Noqanchis: lliwpa revistanchis is published
by the Centro Guaman Poma de Ayala. The second edition will appear soon.
In Peru, after the official recognition of Quechua in 1975, there used to be a
daily newspaper in Quechua, Cronicawan. Then, several years ago, a bilingual
column in Quechua and Spanish appeared regularly in the Sunday edition of El
Comercio, a well-­known Lima-­based newspaper. Currently, however, there is no
regular newspaper publication in Quechua or Aymara in Peru. It should be a
priority to publish more newspapers in Quechua, Aymara, and other indigenous
languages that carry the same content that appears in any dominant-­language
newspaper. Although this would not be a simple undertaking, through careful
planning and the active collaboration of a select group of language planners and
native reporters and writers it is an achievable goal. Publishing such periodicals
online would reduce, or even eliminate, the costs of paper and printing, and
would also enable the publication to reach a wide international audience instan-
taneously, conveniently, and cheaply.

Radio Programs
Radio programming in Quechua and Aymara is well known throughout the
Andes. Many programs are religious or educational in nature; in fact, radio has
traditionally been one means to implement distance learning for basic education
in remote areas. In recent years, however, a wider variety of themes and topics
has become available. Bolivia in particular has made effective use of Quechua in
radio programming. In the 1970s, La Paz had 20 Quechua radio stations and
Cochabamba had 11 (von Gleich, 1994, p.  93). On the downside, very often
the Quechua programming was broadcast only during certain hours, such as
around daybreak and in the late afternoon, to coincide with the typical sched-
ules of rural agricultural communities (Hornberger, 1988). During the rest of
the day, programming was in Spanish. Radio Pacha Qamasa (online), which
broadcasts all kinds of information in Aymara, was created in 2003 by the
Consejo Ejecutivo Aymara. This radio station promotes a nationalistic ideology
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   285

and tries to decolonize education for indigenous peoples in Bolivia. For its part,
Radio Pachamama, broadcasting in Quechua and Aymara, promotes education,
culture, and the history of the indigenous communities (online). Then there is
Alero Quichua Santiagueño, broadcasting via the Internet and disseminating all
manner of news in Argentine Quechua (online).
A long-­standing radio transmission in Quechua, this one with an evangelical
mission, is from HCJB World Radio. This company started broadcasting in
Quechua in 1932 (online; see also Albó, 1998), and currently broadcasts in 20
dialects of Ecuadorian Quichua, Quechua I, and Quechua II throughout
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Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. Programs are produced in both Quito and the
United States, and broadcast using shortwave from the Voice of the Andes in
Ecuador. Transmissions can be heard and understood – despite some dialectal
variations – all the way from southern Colombia throughout Ecuador, Peru,
and Bolivia, down to Santiago del Estero in Argentina (Albó, 1998). Other reli-
gious broadcasters include La voz de AIIECH (Asociación de Iglesias Indígenas
Evangélicas de Chimborazo; online), a local station in Ecuador, and Radio la
Cruz del Sur (online), which broadcasts nationally in Bolivia.
In recent years, some Catholic stations have also begun broadcasting in indi-
genous languages, primarily in rural regions of Bolivia. Albó (1998) notes that
the Protestant stations tend to proselytize more, while the Catholic ones take a
more educational direction. In fact, several local Catholic efforts scattered
throughout rural areas in the Andean countries began what they called escuelas
radiofónicas (radio schools), which eventually combined to form the Asociación
Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica (ALER; online), founded in 1972
and based in Quito. Then, in 1983, the Asociación Mundial de Radios Comu-
nitarias (AMARC) was established, and by 1990 at least 80 of the 201 member
stations were transmitting educational programming in indigenous languages
(online). Currently, a good number of urban, regional, national, and interna-
tional radio stations exist that broadcast at least some programming in Quechua
and Aymara across the Andean region. There are even associations, coopera-
tives, and networks of radio stations, such as the Coordinadora de Radios Popu-
lares del Ecuador (CORAPE; online), the Centro de Educación y Producción
Radial (CEPRA; online), and the Red Kiechua Satelital (RKS), with more than
30 radio stations in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. RKS started in Cochabamba,
Bolivia, in 1997 as part of ALER. It streams its programming in MP3 Pro and
OGG, and sends it via the Internet to ALER’s FPT server. RKS also uses Satel-
lite Internet, Sound Forge, Las Vegas, Adobe Audition, ADAS MSM, digital
recorders, and Skype (online).
Other radio networks devoted to Quechua and Aymara belong to Educación
Radiofónica de Bolivia (ERBOL), an association of radio programs and institu-
tions of educational communications that benefit the Bolivian population. Some
of the media belonging to this network include the online newspaper Agencia de
Noticias Indígenas and the radio stations Radio San Gabriel, Radio San Miguel,
286   S. M. Coronel-Molina

Radio Kancha Parlaspa, Radio Pachamama, Radio Esperanza, Radio Yungas,

Radio Don Bosco, Radio Santa Cruz, Radio Bermejo and Red Pío XII (Edu-
cación Radiofónica, online).
Radio Fides (online) is a station in La Paz that primarily has an entertainment
function, and although it transmits principally in Spanish, it does include com-
mercials and public service announcements in Quechua and Aymara. During its
most popular program, La hora del país (online), it routinely includes brief tidbits
in five or six indigenous languages. Red ACLO is another station with essen-
tially an entertainment function, based in southern Bolivia but affiliated with a
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network of stations that covers the entire country. This allows it to transmit to a
wider audience, especially for sevents of national interest such as presidential
candidates’ debates, sometimes with audience participation. It offers programs in
several dialects of Quechua, transmitted to the entire network via Internet, and
also publishes an online newspaper in Spanish (online).
In the past, Ñuqanchik was a radio programming effort that broadcast via
both radio and the Internet. This program was a joint project among the
Agencia Informativa Pulsar, based in Ecuador, the Red Científica Peruana
(RCP) and the Centro Peruano de Estudios Sociales (CEPES), both of Peru,
and received support from UNESCO. It was distributed to radio stations
throughout the Andean region by email and the Internet, and maintained a
website. Unfortunately, Ñuqanchik is no longer active. The Radio Web Rural
in Peru, with some programs in Quechua, is another network and is associated
with a chain of 22 radio stations (online). Some of these stations with limited
programming in Quechua are Radio Quillabamba, Pachamama Radio, Radio
Juliaca, Ruroq Allpa, and Chami Radio. Last but not least, the Asociación Puk-
llasunchis: Radio con Niñas y Niños de Cusco is a singular organization in
Quechua devoted to radio programming for and by children.
These numerous stations and associations fulfill varying programming niches.
The presence of indigenous languages in radio is not a novelty, and certainly so
much exposure cannot hurt the cause of revitalization. Nevertheless, the persist-
ence of diglossia, manifest in various ways in mass communications, cannot be
denied. It becomes perhaps most obvious when one realizes that live radio pro-
grams in Quechua and Aymara are still mostly limited to very restricted, and
generally not very desirable, time slots.

Television
As with print media, a Quechua and Aymara presence on television is restricted.
There are some sporadic exceptions such as documentaries, plays, reports, and
folkloric festivities in which small segments in these languages might appear, and
again, Bolivia and Ecuador outstrip Peru in this regard. Some significant exam-
ples are televised news programs in Quechua and Aymara that are aired in the
early morning hours, and Radio Televisión Popular (RTP) in La Paz, through
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   287

its program La tribuna libre del pueblo, “gives direct daily access to microphone
and cameras to the urban cholo audience for them to air their complaints and
desires” (Albó, 1998, pp. 150–151).
Likewise, in Chimborazo, Ecuador, a television news program in Quichua
called Ayllupak kawsay has been produced and broadcast by Abyayala TV
(http://abyayala.tv) online and posted on Vimeo. Another television program in
Quechua called Saqrakuna primer programa constitutes a remarkable contribution
to the maintenance, development, promotion, and revitalization of Quechua, in
no small part because it was directed and transmitted by teenagers and young
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adults who were clearly not professionals in the communications field. The
program follows 25 teens and young adults from across the Peruvian provinces.
It was produced in 2009 by the Asociación para la Promoción de la Educación
y el Desarrollo de Apurímac Tarpurisunchis, a non-­profit organization founded
in 2003 by a group devoted to educational development in Apurimac, Peru. It
is a singular pioneering effort that seeks to empower young people to identify
with their own language and culture.
These examples show that while an indigenous-­language presence is not
strong in television, there are some good beginnings on which to build. It is to
be hoped that these beginnings will not be allowed to wither.

Films and Documentaries

Films and documentaries are also generally classified as mass media. They can
certainly be a significant means of reaching the public and thus, again, of influ-
encing public opinion. There is not a thriving Quechua film tradition, but, as
with television, some efforts have been made. A few movies have been pro-
duced by indigenous groups in Bolivia in a mix of Quechua, Aymara, and
Spanish, with the support of farmers’ and miners’ organizations and some
regional clubs. These include ¡Aysa! (1965), Akamau (1966), Yawar mallku
(1969), Jatun auca (1973), and Llujsi caimanta (1977), all directed by the Bolivian
Jorge Sanjinés. A complete list of his films can be found at the Portal del cine y el
material audiovisual latinoamericano y caribeño (online). Other classic films include
Yawar Fiesta (directed by Luis Figeroa, 1979), Kukuli (also directed by Luis
Figeroa, 1961), and, surprisingly, Star Wars (1977), all with short dialogues in
Quechua. More recent films that incorporate at least some Quechua include
The Dancer Upstairs (2002), La teta asustada/The Milk of Sorrow (directed by
Claudia Llosa, 2009), and Trailer Q´eros (2010). Documentaries in Quechua
include Aymara Leadership, Andean Women, Viracocha, Mi chacra, At High Risks,
Awsangate in the Footsteps of Taytacha, and El universo audiovisual de los pueblos
indígenas, a product of the project Muestra Documental Kikinyari. All these
films and many others can be found at Documentary and Educational Resources
(online). More such works need to be produced in Quechua and Aymara in
order to promote, develop, invigorate, and document these languages.
288   S. M. Coronel-Molina

The Internet
The use of the Internet is perhaps the most significant example of mass media
today. Although there is a vast amount of information on the Internet in many
languages, those that predominate are the more widely spoken languages. Thus,
the continuous development of content for websites not only in Quechua and
Aymara, but also about their respective cultures, should be a high priority.
Failing this, it will be a true challenge for indigenous languages to take advant-
age of the power of the Internet and other communication technologies.
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In recent years, numerous groups and individuals interested in the develop-

ment and teaching of indigenous languages have taken up the challenge of
diminishing the digital divide between the haves and the have-­nots. There are
innumerable initiatives worldwide that seek to prevent the extinction of indi-
genous languages, or at least to reverse language shift. The Internet warehouses
an enormous number of websites created by indigenous, governmental, and
non-­governmental organizations, religious, political, philanthropic and academic
entities, as well as publishers and researchers, activists, and individuals with a
strong interest in indigenous languages. These websites contain abundant links
to resources both in and on Quechua and Aymara.
Many of those involved in diminishing that digital divide become involved
in projects designed to battle language loss and extinction. Often the most suc-
cessful of these projects involve a broad range of participants, but especially
members of the communities the projects seek to serve. Knowing this, institu-
tions try to involve the pertinent indigenous communities in their programs.
Some of these projects in different parts of the world produce videos about
indigenous cultures. These videos often are made by the community members
themselves, in the hope that they will serve not only to help revitalize the lan-
guages of their respective cultures, but also to reaffirm their ethnic identity.
Because of efforts like these, Quechua and Aymara are both showing an
increasing presence on the Internet. There are thousands of websites related in
some way to these two languages, although the number actually in them is
lower. There are websites that offer self-­study courses, many including multi-
media elements such as video and audio clips and record-­and-play capability to
practice pronunciation and conversation. Other sites collect translations, stories,
myths, folktales, jokes, songs and music, art; some even highlight original
poetry. Some of the websites offering such diverse content in Quechua include
the Asociación de Investigadores en Lengua Quechua (ADILQ), Llaqta
Amachaq, Perú Suyu Rimanan Wasi (http://www.congreso.gob.pe/_quechua/
index.htm), Quechua Language and Linguistics, and Runasimi.DE. For Aymara
we have Aymara Uta, Aymarata Global Voices, and the Instituto de Lengua y
Cultura Aymara (ILCA; http://www.ilcanet.org). For Quechua and Aymara
combined, there are Culture of the Andes and Runasimi Kuchu.com. Llajta-
Net.com – Música offers Andean music in audio and video formats in Quechua
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   289

and Spanish, and also hosts a music blog. The availability of musical programs in
Quechua also implies that songs are being written and produced in Quechua,
adding another genre of linguistic output available to the public.
Another effort that will contribute to the revitalization of Quechua and
Aymara is the design of websites with interfaces entirely in these languages.
Such websites should be developed by teams of native and non-­native experts.
Some of the websites mentioned above already use Quechua and Aymara inter-
faces, and also maintain their content entirely in these languages. Given the
advantages offered by a web presence, this is perhaps one of the best ways to
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help promote and revitalize them.

Social Media
Social media provide a new functional domain that is both important and
powerful. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as “a group of
Internet-­based applications that build on the ideological and technological
foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-­
generated content” (p. 61). It involves a host of online or mobile interfaces,
including Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, online forums, wikis,
and podcasts, that allow one individual to interact with multiple contacts at
once and to share various forms of user-­generated content with them, such as
music, videos, photos, news feeds, etc. These new technologies permit real-­time
interactive dialogue, as opposed, for instance, to the more static and one-­way
type of communication provided by email. Such communication technologies
are “ubiquitously accessible and scalable” (Social Media, online).
Kaplan and Haenlein developed a classification scheme for different forms of
social media, which includes five categories: collaborative projects, such as
wikis, blogs, and microblogs; content communities like YouTube and Flickr;
social networking sites; virtual game worlds; and virtual social worlds such as
Second Life. Social media have become so popular so fast because they provide
many or all of seven functional building blocks of social life – identity, conver-
sations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups – that meet the
engagement needs of those who use social media (Kietzmann, Hermkens,
McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). For example, “LinkedIn users care mostly about
identity, reputation and relationships,” while YouTube devotees are focused
more on “sharing, conversations, groups and reputation” (Social Media, online).
Already the presence of Quechua and Aymara in social media is remarkable.
There are numerous chat rooms and virtual forums, blogs, Facebook pages,
Google+ pages, Twitter, YouTube, online forums, wikis, podcasts, social net-
working sites, virtual game worlds, and 3-D virtual social worlds such as Second
Life where Quechua and Aymara are being used. Indigenous peoples are empow-
ering themselves by appropriating these technologies to organize themselves and
communicate in Quechua and Aymara, sharing information and knowledge.
290   S. M. Coronel-Molina

Some of the most prominent examples of Facebook pages in Quechua and

Aymara include Quechua at NYU, Weekly Quechua, Idioma Quechua, Quere-
mos recuperar el QUECHUA!, Lengua-­aymara.com, Jaqi Aru, Runa Simi Yuyariway.
Blogs are also popular for promoting Quechua and Aymara. Some examples are
Buscando al Quechua en Internet, Quechua nuestra lengua, Allillanchu, Runasimillapi,
Runasimi ñawpa willana, Rimanakusunchik, Jaqi Aru (the blog, not the Facebook
site), La hora del quechua, and Hawansuyo, among others. More recently, Twitter
tweets have also started appearing in Quechua and Aymara. Some examples are
Mayachat Aymara, Hablemos quechua, and again Jaqi Aru (which is a distinct entity
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on Twitter). Likewise, these languages are gaining ground in wikis. The most
remarkable examples are Wikipidiya qhapaq p’anqa and Wikipidiya Chuqiyapu
jach’a suyu in Quechua, and Wikipidiya Nayriri uñstawi in Aymara. Recently, the
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at New York Uni-
versity created Rimasun, Quechua-­language podcasts devoted to promoting and
disseminating Quechua. Both languages can be found on 3-D Virtual Social
World as well. Our own project in progress at Indiana University-­Bloomington
includes the teaching and learning of Quechua and Aymara in Second Life. In
addition to all this, through Slide Share, Scribd, and other tools, people are
sharing their presentations and publications in and on Quechua and Aymara.
According to my research, YouTube is currently the most common social
medium for hosting Quechua and Aymara, followed by blogs and then Face-
book pages. As a matter of fact, there are thousands of videos on YouTube both
in and on Quechua, and hundreds in and on Aymara. The video productions
range from commercial spots (e.g., Reportaje Movistar), to cartoons (see Yawar-
pampa/Campo de sangre), comedy shows, soap operas, films and documentaries
related to language and culture, radio programs, stories (e.g., “El zorro y el
condor,” online), poetry, religious programs, conferences, interviews, Quechua
and Aymara virtual classes, and Andean festivities. The most fascinating and
novel examples are modern musical performances such as cumbias and salsas
(two genres of Latin American music), romantic love songs, rock’n’roll, blues,
Disney songs, hip hop in several dialects of Quechua (see “Los Nin Mushuk
Runa” for Ecuadorean Quichua), and finally Quechua and Aymara rap (sample
sites for most of these forms are listed in the bibliography). There are also exam-
ples of fusion and hybridized techno musical productions, which are performed
nationally and internationally. Just a few outstanding examples are the Puerto
Rican rappers Calle 13 singing “Latinoamérica” with Susana Baca of Peru; the
Peruvian artist Damaris singing “Tusuy Kusun” in Quechua; and the Bolivian
singer Zulma Yugar offering “K’oli Pankarita” in Aymara.

Software and Programming

In addition to the new social media, technological tools such as ATMs now
offer services in Quechua, Aymara, Guarani, and Spanish in Bolivia. (For more
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   291

information on this topic, see BBC News (2001). Also, the One Laptop per
Child program is being successfully used in Andean territory for educating
Quechua and Aymara children (online), as is transient technology such as cell
phones, CD-­ROMs, DVDs, and iPods. One example is software for Learning
Basic Quechua for use on iPhones, iPads, and similar devices (online). Likewise,
software such as spell-­checking, video games, machine translation programs,
Windows XP and Windows 7 packages (online), Open Office, AbiWord,
Intrans.php, Hunspell, and GNOME are all being used in Quechua and
Aymara. An exemplary website containing resources developed using open-­
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source programs is Runasimipi Qhespisqa Software (online).

Microsoft has worked in close cooperation with native speakers and transla-
tors in numerous countries to create linguistic sets consisting of glossaries of
basic computer interface terminology found in menus and dialog boxes. These
sets are overlaid on Windows and Office programs, thus providing native-­
language interfaces for these popular and widely used programs. Needless to say,
one of the languages they are working with is Quechua (see Windows® XP
Qheshwa Rimapayqhpa T’iqinta and Windows 7 Interfaz Simikuna Pataqan).
In addition to these singular contributions, there is also Google Quechua
(online). Last but not least, there are now electronic interactive games such as
Uma Muyuchiq Tapuykuna ( Jeopardy) and ¿Pitaq Qullqisapa Kayta Munan?
(Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) to teach Quechua as a second and foreign
language, which can be adapted to teach Aymara and other languages. All
these new technologies constitute powerful allies in language teaching and
learning, language preservation, development, documentation, promotion, and
revitalization.

Multimedia and Multimodal Pedagogical Materials

All these new technologies can play an essential role in pedagogy and the crea-
tion of teaching materials. In the Andean region and beyond, mass media and
social media can make great contributions to the innovation of mother-­tongue
pedagogy. For example, the creation and use of audio and video digital archives
facilitates the students’ use of language in its true cultural context. These multi-
media and multimodal materials include spontaneous conversations, both formal
and informal, in different contexts: dialogues, life stories, interviews, commer-
cial announcements, complaints, arguments, gossip, romantic encounters, and
verbal art. They also include examples of communicative and pragmatic func-
tions and the interactional norms of the language: apologizing, greetings, and
showing different emotions in various circumstances. They also include exam-
ples of paralinguistic traits: non-­verbal communication manifested through ges-
tures, facial expressions, and tone of voice. Although incorporating multimedia
technology can be a challenge for teachers and students, its use is essential.
Therefore, educators should be trained in the use of these technologies both for
292   S. M. Coronel-Molina

the development of teaching materials and for language pedagogy. Obviously,

this will depend on the accessibility of technological equipment.
There is already a wide range of educational multimedia resources in and on
Quechua and Aymara on the Internet. For example, in addition to those already
mentioned, there are numerous e-­textbooks, e-­dictionaries, e-­grammars, etc. –
materials that constitute complementary resources for printed pedagogical
materials. These new materials would be useful not only within a classroom
context but also, and perhaps especially, in long-­distance education. Tradition-
ally, the latter has been carried out through radio and television programming.
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Now, however, technology is revolutionizing education, which can be accom-

plished through multimedia modules transmitted via the Internet and with soft-
ware such as Adobe Connect, podcasts, and Skype. Users can even record a
class or create virtual courses in one place and transmit them via television or
the Internet to almost anywhere in the world. These programs take advantage
of self-­teaching materials and the assistance of a virtual instructor.
The Internet and social media play an essential role in language revitalization
through codification, including the production of dictionaries, grammars, and
glossaries. In fact, many such publications in different dialects of Quechua and
Aymara already exist. It is crucial to continue to produce a wide range of both
print and digitally recorded spoken material, taking advantage of media informa-
tion technologies. Basic resources, including images and audio and video
recordings, should be digitized and made available on the Internet, perhaps in a
virtual library or a YouTube “warehouse” created specifically for this purpose.
A significant contribution in this direction would be increasing production of
specialized dictionaries in Quechua and Aymara to be published online. More
online courses for teaching these languages are also needed.
There are already some academic audiovisual productions developed by
diverse institutions in collaboration with educators, anthropologists, literary
scholars, musicologists, linguists, and native speakers of Andean languages, only
a few of which I mention here. The first is a series of audio and video materials
on anthropology, history, and art of the Andean region produced by the Insti-
tuto de Etnomusicología of the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Peru (http://
ide.pucp.edu.pe/index.php?option=com_publication&task=publicacion&secc=
4&cat=13&Itemid=49). The second is an audiovisual archive of materials pro-
duced by researchers affiliated with the French Institute of Andean Studies
(http://www.ifeanet.org) in Peru, which has maintained the archive since 2001.
Their catalog of ethnographic multimedia productions of oral and musical tradi-
tions of the Andean nations can be accessed on the Internet. Other important
contributions are Runasimi-­Kuchu.com, a site that contains a wealth of
resources on Quechua and Aymara, Runasiminet (an online Quechua course),
Ciberaymara (an online Aymara course), Quechua at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-­Champaign, Quechua at New York University, Quechua online at
Indiana University-­Bloomington, Oralidad modernidad: hacia el encuentro de las
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   293

lenguas indígenas del Ecuador (online), and Weekly Quechua (on YouTube and
Facebook). All these websites contain rich pedagogical resources for the learn-
ing and teaching of Quechua and Aymara. There are many resources scattered
around, but they need to be integrated in a systematic way into a comprehen-
sive website (such as a virtual library).

Obstacles and Limitations

All of these examples demonstrate the great opportunities that communication
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technologies offer. One of the biggest obstacles in the use of these technologies
is connectivity. In previous years, connections were impeded by the topography
of the Andean countries. Nevertheless, thanks to contemporary advances in sat-
ellite and wireless technologies, today these connectivity issues can be overcome
with greater ease and cost efficiency.
Similarly, taking advantage of any technological resource implies costs on a
scale that the great majority of indigenous communities cannot afford, given
that they are often hard-­pressed just to scrape together the resources for daily
living. Even so, I think solid financial and technical planning can facilitate access
to new technologies for even the most remote communities. Such planning
should result from dialogue, understanding, and cooperation between the
federal government, language planners, political leaders, teachers, and indigen-
ous organizations.
Furthermore, before new technologies are adopted it is critical to take into
consideration the following questions: Will the group receiving the services of a
language revitalization program have access to computers? Are there enough
computer experts in the community to maintain and regularly update the hard-
ware and software of the computers, and to update programs and systems as
necessary? Do the community’s revitalization goals lend themselves to computer
technology? Are the necessary resources available to create programs or other
software products that will be sufficient to achieve the goals of a given com-
munity? Will it be a problem that computer technology is not a traditional
medium for the community and may reduce interaction among human beings?
(Hinton, 2001, p. 266).
Keeping in mind these questions and other necessities of the rural com-
munities, state education systems can implement modules and educational pro-
grams in indigenous languages that include technology for the rural schools of
the Andean countries. At the same time, other training programs in which com-
munity members can actively participate should be implemented.
One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome is the lack of literacy educa-
tion in rural communities, due to the scarcity of funding and the lack of educa-
tional opportunities. This problem continues to be a considerable barrier that
impedes the achievement of any goal involving the use of technology in lan-
guage revitalization in rural contexts. Perhaps a partial solution could be the use
294   S. M. Coronel-Molina

of text-­to-speech software. This would, of course, imply the existence of such

software in indigenous languages, something that cannot necessarily be taken for
granted.
In general, given the drastic differences in economic resources and oppor-
tunities between social classes in Latin America, the digital divide could contrib-
ute to the increasing division between classes in this region instead of creating
better opportunities for everyone. To avoid this increase in social disparity, it is
imperative that planning incorporate technological, economic, linguistic, polit-
ical, and educational issues and perspectives, with the inclusion and participation
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of members from all sectors of society in planning and implementation.

It must be recognized that there are some disadvantages to mass media in
rural areas, especially regarding Internet access. Two such drawbacks are lack of
familiarity with information centers (e.g., public Internet booths) and the low
credibility of the information to be obtained in such places. Furthermore, there
is the difficulty of establishing such information centers in the most remote rural
areas. One possible solution would be to blend types of technology to reach
more users. For example, radio could be a first-­line technology, and through
public Internet centers other forms of communication could be promoted.
Needless to say, radio programs should continue to be transmitted and the new
technologies should be made available in these languages. This way, people not
only receive information but also exchange it (Van Koert, 2000). It is crucial
that people feel the technology belongs to them, and that it is not something
imposed on them from outside. They must feel in control of the technology,
and recognize it as relevant to their lives (Lieberman, 2002; Van Koert, 2000).

Conclusion
There is still much to be done to take full advantage of the benefits that the
new communication technologies offer. Throughout this chapter, I have dis-
cussed the advantages of mass and social media, and made some suggestions
regarding different projects that would utilize new technologies to help revital-
ize and spread the Quechua and Aymara languages. It is fundamental for any
such effort to have the decisive support and positive attitude of the Spanish-­
speaking population. Also, to aggressively maintain, revitalize, and spread both
Quechua and Aymara, as Fishman (1991) points out, it is essential to take into
consideration the social networks that join school, home, community, and the
society at large. At all costs, the uncoupling of this chain of intimately linked
elements should be avoided if positive results are to be obtained.
Mass media, social media, computers, and schooling can all play a significant
role in language revitalization, but by no means do they constitute a panacea for
language maintenance and revitalization. Intergenerational transmission of the
mother tongue is still the most powerful and effective prescription for invigorating
and preserving the functional domains of indigenous languages (Fishman, 1991).
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   295

Yet it is simplistic to say that the users themselves of indigenous languages

are the only ones truly in charge of transmitting their languages from generation
to generation. The matter is unimaginably complex, owing to innumerable
sociocultural, geopolitical, ideological, sociolinguistic, sociohistorical, and eco-
nomic factors. To solidify the objectives of language teaching and learning and
language revitalization, it is necessary to take robust measures at every level, and
to consolidate, articulate, unite, and multiply efforts. It is also critical to develop,
with top-­down and bottom-­up participation, a solid linguistic, financial, and
technological plan, and genuine educational reform to allow indigenous lan-
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guages to take their rightful place in education and the broader society. All of
this needs to happen with the active participation of the indigenous peoples
themselves, and all other sectors of society. Otherwise, the Quechua and
Aymara languages will slowly decline and could eventually become extinct.

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Media References and Resources

Abyayala TV Online. Website. Retrieved from http://abyayala.tv
Agencia de Noticias Indígenas. Online newspaper. Retrieved from http://www.indigena.
erbol.com.bo
Alero Quichua Santiagueño. Radio network. Website. Retrieved from http://www.ale-
roquichua.org.ar/sitio/index.php.
Allillanchu. Blog. Retrieved from http://allillanchu.blogspot.com
Asociación de Investigadores en Lengua Quechua (ADILQ). Website. Retrieved from
http://www.adilq.com.ar/index.htm
Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica (ALER). Radio network.
Website. Retrieved from http://www.aler.org
Asociación Mundial de Radios Comunitarias (AMARC). Radio network. Website.
Retrieved from http://www.amarc.org
Asociación Pukllasunchis: radio con niños y niñas de Cusco. Website. Retrieved from
http://www.pukllasunchis.org/radio/
Ayllupak Kawsay. Television. Quito: Abyayala TV. Retrieved from http://ayllupakkaw-
say.com
Aymara Global Voices. Blog. Retrieved from http://aym.globalvoicesonline.org
Aymara Uta. Website. Retrieved from http://www.aymara.org
Buscando al quechua en Internet. Agencia de Noticias Servindi. Website. Retrieved
from http://servindi.org/actualidad/50705
Calle 13 & Baca, S. “Latinoamérica.” Song. Retrieved from http://www.larepublica.
pe/27-09-2011/susana-­canta-el-­tema-latinoamerica
Centro de Comunicación y Desarrollo Andino de Bolivia. Website. Retrieved from
http://www.cenda.org
Centro de Educación y Producción Radial (CEPRA). Radio. Website. Retrieved from
http://www.ceprabolivia.org
Chami Radio. Website. Retrieved from http://www.chamiradio.org.pe
Chuqiyapu jach’a suyu. Wikipedia entry. Retrieved from http://ay.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Chuqiyapu_jach%27a_suyu
Ciberaymara. Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymaras (ILCA). Online Aymara course.
Retrieved from www.ilcanet.org/ciberaymara/
Congress of the Republic of Peru. Website. Retrieved from http://www.congreso.gob.
pe/_ingles/index.htm
Coordinadora de Radio Popular Educativa del Ecuador (CORAPE). Radio network. Website.
Retrieved from http://www.corape.org.ec
298   S. M. Coronel-Molina

Cultures of the Andes. Website. Retrieved from http://www.andes.org

Damaris. “Tusuy Kusun” (in Viña del Mar, Chile). Lunazul Producciones. Song.
Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shag7dvoVXA
Dancer Upstairs, The (2002). Film. John Malkovich (Dir.). Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Documentary Educational Resources. Website. Retrieved from http://www.der.org
Educación Radiofónica de Bolivia (ERBOL). Radio network. Website. Retrieved from
http://www.erbol.com.bo
El Comercio. Newspaper. Retrieved from http://elcomercio.pe
“El zorro y el cóndor” (Quechua legend). YouTube. Retrieved from http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=kzK89qz337k
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Google Quechua. Search engine. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/

webhp?hl=qu
Hablemos quechua. Twitter. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/#!/hablemosquechua
Hawansuyo. Blog. Retrieved from http://hawansuyo.blogspot.com
HCJB World Radio. Website. Retrieved from www.hcjb.org/Latin-­America-Region/
latin-­america-region.html
Idioma Quechua. Facebook. Retrieved from http://es-­es.facebook.com/pages/EL-­
IDIOMA-QUECHUA/243579189007229
Jaqi Aru. Blog. Retrieved from http://jaqi-­aru.org/blog/
Jaqi Aru. Facebook. Retrieved from http://es-­es.facebook.com/jaqiaru
Jaqi Aru. Twitter. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/#!/jaqiaru
La hora del quechua/Runasiminchis. Blog. Centro Guaman Poma de Ayala. Retrieved
from http://www.guamanpoma.org/blog/?p=3117
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www.arch.cam.ac.uk/~pah1003/quechua/Eng/Main/i_EuroTalkSoftware.HTM
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lengua-­aymaracom/138670876177388
Llaqta Amachaq. Website. Retrieved from http://www.defensoria.gob.pe/quechua.php
LlajtaNet.com – Música. Website. Retrieved from http://www.llajtanet.com
Los Nin Mushuk Runa. Song. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK
CJfAFpjIc&feature=related
Mayachat Aymara. Twitter. Retrieved from http://twitter.com/#!/MayachatAymara
Noqanchis: lliwpa revistanchis. Centro Guaman Poma de Ayala. Online magazine.
Retrieved from www.guamanpoma.org/blog/wp-­content/uploads/2011/06/Revista-­
Noqanchis-1.pdf
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Retrieved from http://www.unirbolivia.org/nueva3/index.php?option= com_content
&view=article&id=151&Itemid=23
One Laptop per Child. Website. Retrieved from http://one.laptop.org/stories
Oralidad modernidad: hacia el encuentro de las lenguas indígenas del Ecuador. Website.
Retrieved from http://www.oralidadmodernidad.com
Poma Ulo, B. (2011). En los medios de La Paz y El Alto: se habla, pero no se lee aymara.
ONADEM. Blog, June 2011. Retrieved from http://onadembolivia.blogspot.
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Portal del cine y el material audiovisual latinoamericano y caribeño. Website. Retrieved
from http://www.cinelatinoamericano.org/cineasta.aspx?cod=48
Quechua at Indiana University, Bloomington. Website. Retrieved from http://www.
iub.edu/~celtie/quechua.html.
New Domains of Quechua and Aymara   299

Quechua at New York University. Website. Retrieved from http://clacs.as.nyu.edu/

page/quechua
Quechua at NYU. Facebook. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/#!/Que-
chuaatNYU
Quechua at the University of Illinois at Urbana-­Champaign. Website. Retrieved from
http://www.clacs.illinois.edu/quechua/
Quechua Language and Linguistics. Website. Retrieved from www.quechua.org.uk
Quechua nuestra lengua. Blog. Retrieved from http://quechuanuestralengua.blogspot.
com
Queremos recuperar el Quechua!!! Facebook. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.
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com/search.php?q=Quechua&init=quick&tas=0.35648112926189285#!/pages/
Queremos-­recuperar-el-­QUECHUA/10150119886325111
Qullana Aymara Yatichawi Ulaka/Consejo Educativo Aymara (CEA). Website.
Retrieved from http://www.cepos.bo/index.php?option=com_content&view=article
&id=13&Itemid=100008
Red ACLO. Website. Retrieved from http://aclo.org.bo/bolivia/
Radio Fides.com. Website. Retrieved from http://www.radiofides.com
Radio Juliaca. Website. Retrieved from http://www.radiojuliaca.com.pe
Radio la Cruz del Sur. Website. Retrieved from http://radiocruzdelsur.com
Radio Pacha Qamasa. Website. Retrieved from http://pachaqamasa.blogspot.com
Radio Pachamama 850 AM. Website. Retrieved from http://www.pachamamaradio.org
Radio Quillabamba. Website. Retrieved from http://quillabambanoticias.org/radioquil-
labamba
Radio Web Rural. Website. Retrieved from http://www.cepes.org.pe/portal/radio
Rap in Quechua and Aymara. Song. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=qUIk7YwfORg
Red Kiechua Satelital (RKS). Radio network. Retrieved from http://rks.aler.org
Reportaje Movistar. YouTube. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=Wmvcv0RV54M
Revue Amérindia. Online magazine. Retrieved from http://celia.cnrs.fr/Fr/Amerindia.
htm
Rimanakusunchik. Blog. Retrieved from http://numa-­armakanki.blogspot.com/2011/
10/stlilla-­2011.html
Rimasun. Podcasts. CLACS at New York University. Retrieved from http://itunes.
apple.com/podcast/id469419183
Rock’n’roll in Quechua. Song. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn8
KrBC5b0s&feature=related
Runasimi.DE. Website. Retrieved from www.runasimi.de
Runasimi Kuchu.com. Website. Retrieved from http://runasimi-­kuchu.com
Runasimi ñawpa willana. Blog. Retrieved from http://runasimiwillana.blogspot.com
Runasimillapi. Blog. Retrieved from http://www.runasimillapi.blogspot.com
RunasimiNet. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Online Quechua course.
Retrieved from http://facultad.pucp.edu.pe/ciencias-­sociales/curso/quechua/home.
htm
Runasimipi Qespisqa Software. Runasimipi.org. Website. Retrieved from http://www.
runasimipi.org
Runasimi Simi Yuyariway. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.
php?id=100000926356725&sk=wall
300   S. M. Coronel-Molina

Salsa in Quechua. Song. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= wo2o4rm-

DT0w
Saqrakuna Primer Programa. Television. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=_q3qpqe9VgM and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2jkY8f4IgM
Star Wars. Quechua conversation. YouTube. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Oaj9Th-2avM
Trailer Q´eros. CANNES 2010 Short Film Corner. YouTube. Retrieved from http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjnSyTe61kY
Universo audiovisual de los pueblos indígenas – Muestra Documental Kikinyari. May
2010. YouTube. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZy0w5IjJdY
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Voz de AIIECH (Asociación de Iglesias Indígenas Evangélicas de Chimborazo). Radio.

Website. Retrieved from http://www.lavozdeaiiech.org.ec
Weekly Quechua. Facebook. Retrieved from http://es-­es.facebook.com/livejaime
Wikipidiya Nayriri uñstawi. Wikipedia in Aymara. Retrieved from http://ay.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Nayriri_u%C3%B1stawi
Wikipidiya Chuqiyapu jach’a suyu. Wikipedia in Quechua. Retrieved from http://ay.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuqiyapu_jach’a_suyu
Wikipidiya Qhapaq P’anqa. Wikipedia in Quechua. Retrieved from http://qu.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Qhapaq_p%27anqa
Wiñay Kawsay. Online periodical. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/
13417717/Diario-­WINAY-KAWSAY
Windows® XP Qhishwa Rimapayqhpa T’iqinta. Windows XP interface in Quechua.
Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0db2
e8f9-79c4-4625-a07a-0cc1b341be7c&DisplayLang=qu
Windows® 7 Interfaz Simikuna Pataqan. Windows 7 interface in Quechua. Retrieved
from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a1a48de1-e264-
48d6-8439-ab7139c9c14d&displaylang=qu
Yawarpampa/Campo de sangre. Television. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=2-Mcrayrocw
Yugar, Z. K’oli Pankarita. Song. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm
hfuq6bevo&feature=related
15
LANGUAGE POLICY AND
DEMOCRATIC PLURALISM
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James W. Tollefson

Language policies in education emerge as a result of economic, political, cul-

tural, and social forces such as nationalism (Kenya), economic inequality (the
United States), globalization (India, Japan), ethno-­political struggle (Rwanda,
Solomon Islands), tensions between different visions of language rights (the Car-
ibbean Coast of Nicaragua, Native America, the School District of Philadel-
phia), the economic strains of postcolonial societies (Lesotho, Swaziland,
Kenya), elite competition (Rwanda), and cultural revitalization (the Andes
region, Native America). Despite the wide range of forces affecting language
policies in education, however, the research reported in this volume reveals
common issues that recur in many contexts worldwide. Below, I summarize
these issues, suggesting common themes in language policies in education.
(1) The close relationship between restrictive language policies and related policy areas
such as immigration. In his analysis of restrictive language policies in the United
States, Wiley observes that language restrictions are often accompanied by other
forms of repression. As Leibowitz (1974) pointed out, official-­language move-
ments and other restrictions on language in education are “almost always
coupled with . . . discriminatory legislation and practices in other fields against
the minorities who [speak] the language, including private indignities . . . which
[make] it clear that the issue [is] a broader one” than merely medium of instruc-
tion (p. 6). In the United States, statutory and constitutional restrictions on the
use of minority languages in education are greatest in states in which other
restrictions are also in place. The state of Arizona, for example, not only banned
most forms of bilingual education but also passed a series of laws aimed at
undocumented immigrants, such as forbidding the use of public funds to teach
them English, requiring police to check the immigration status of any individual
who appeared to be undocumented, and revoking the business license of any
302   J. W. Tollefson

employer who hired undocumented workers. (Courts have blocked the imple-
mentation of some aspects of such laws.) Analysis of language policies in educa-
tion, therefore, must acknowledge the wider issues that generate such
restrictions, such as anti-­immigrant movements fueled by demagogic political
leaders, efforts to block ethnolinguistic groups from political participation when
their active involvement threatens ruling parties, and “divide-­and-rule” dis-
courses that make it possible for leaders to implement unpopular economic pol-
icies while remaining in power.
(2) The paradoxical impact of globalization on language policies in education. In
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Japan, intense concern about limited English language proficiency among Japa-
nese citizens and the perceived need to improve Japan’s economic competit-
iveness through English have been a focus of public debate for 20 years, and
policies have been adopted at the national level to encourage English language
learning at ever-­lower grades in school. At the same time, however, the gov-
ernment ministry responsible for English promotion policies in schools is also
committed to reinvigorating nationalism through citizenship lessons, patriotic
symbols such as singing the national anthem in schools, and intensified interest
in the Japanese language as a core symbol of Japanese national identity. The
threat that English presents to the national language is widely seen as serious and
immediate, as evidenced by the reaction against the proposal in 2000 to con-
sider making English a second official language (PMC, 2000). Thus, the new
English curriculum is as much focused on promoting Japanese as it is on pro-
moting English. In India, the spread of English is also discursively associated
with educational and economic opportunity, but the real impact of the increas-
ing use of English as a medium of instruction may be to reduce educational par-
ticipation and to limit the probability of success in school for the rural poor and
others who have virtually no access to English or to high quality English lan-
guage instruction.
In other settings, such as Rwanda, English may be explicitly and deliberately
linked with inequality. The rapid adoption of English to replace French as the
medium of instruction in Rwanda is due not only to the economic value of
English but also to interest-­group politics, with Anglophones seizing the oppor-
tunity to replace Francophones in controlling the levers of power in the central
government. As these cases suggest, globalization does not mean simply that
English is the preferred language of study or instruction offering opportunity to
all. It also means that English is intimately involved in new struggles over the
distribution of economic resources and political power. In these struggles, the
perceived economic advantages of English may be exploited by some groups for
their own benefit, under the guise of promoting policies to help others.
While globalization threatens community languages, it may also, through the
new technologies on which it depends, offer tools for maintaining these lan-
guages. For example, the remarkable array of media resources for Quechua and
Aymara that Coronel-­Molina summarizes suggests enormous possibilities for
Language Policy and Democratic Pluralism   303

future programs. In particular, new media offer potential for active use of the
languages, not only the relatively passive exposure that takes place with print,
film, radio, and television. Moreover, for Quechua and Aymara youth the
attraction of new media – indeed, its social identity function, as McCarty shows
in her analysis of Navajo youth – provides hope that threatened languages can
break out of their identification with the elderly, the “old ways,” and the past,
and instead become associated with new multilingual and multiethnic identities
(see Maher, 2005, for an analysis of “cool” metroethnicity).
(3) Transformations in conceptions of “language,” “identity,” and “language rights.”
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The chapters in this book demonstrate that apparently similar policies may have
fundamentally different motives and aims. For example, despite the risk of
increasing inequality between the poor and the middle class, and between rural
and urban dwellers, the promotion of English in India is widely perceived as
having socially and politically integrative value, without sectarian consequences.
In Rwanda, on the other hand, English promotion policies are linked with
ongoing ethnolinguistic divisions that were most intensely manifest in genocidal
violence in 1994. Although the rationale for English promotion policies in most
contexts entails a non-­sectarian discourse, there is little doubt that official lan-
guage movements and medium-­of-instruction debates remain linked with eth­
nolinguistic identity in Rwanda and elsewhere.
In the multilingual Caribbean Coast region of Nicaragua, Native American
communities in the United States, the Andean region of South America, and
elsewhere, complex linguistic communities are not adequately described by
straightforward notions of “language” and “dialect.” Instead, an adequate model
of language in society must incorporate notions of linguistic ecology, sociolin-
guistic nexus, heteroglossic home–community environments, and the hybridity
of communicative repertoires. Of course, a growing body of research adopting
this perspective has enabled researchers to better understand real-­life language
use, and also to explain policy outcomes, such as the difficulties encountered in
implementing language rights legislation in Nicaragua.
The failure of traditional conceptions of “language” and “identity” to
adequately describe the complex linguistic ecology of multilingual communities
has become so widely recognized among language policy scholars that Freeland
proposes that the underlying concepts of the language rights discourse “need
deconstructing and reinventing in light of the local language ideologies of the
target groups whose rights are to be vouchsafed.” She suggests that “the idea of
‘language rights’ ” may need to be abandoned “in favour of a broader concept
like ‘linguistic citizenship.’ ” The case of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua
reveals that even groups who agree on the importance of ensuring language
rights may have fundamentally different notions of what this means. The dis-
course of language rights not only varies widely but – particularly in its forms
that emerged from European conceptions of nationalism – may be only margin-
ally connected with actual language use in multilingual communities.
304   J. W. Tollefson

(4) The complex role of diglossia in language maintenance and revival. Mülhäusler
(1996) and Nettle and Romaine (2000) argue that diglossia often protects com-
munity languages by providing clearly distinct social functions in which they do
not compete with other varieties spoken by more powerful groups. In her anal-
ysis of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, Freeland argues that diglossia may be
the only system of functional differentiation that can protect language com-
munities speaking varieties that have relatively little economic value compared
to dominant varieties such as Spanish. The alternative goal of achieving func-
tional parity may lead, as Freeland fears, to a “competition where those at the
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back will never catch the front runners.” Thus, for the Tuahka in Coastal Nica-
ragua, “the race to equality has brought only disparity, inequality, and
division.”
In some contexts, diglossia may be undermined by migration or other social
forces that destabilize systems of functional allocation and thus threaten marginal
groups and their languages. In his classic analysis of diglossia, Fishman (1967;
also see 2000) argued that functional allocation of language varieties in multilin-
gual communities without diglossia will be fundamentally unstable, favoring
dominant varieties in the long run. As the Andes region demonstrates, when
language varieties have limited economic value, a steady erosion of domains in
which community languages are used may take place, particularly when diglos-
sia restricts community languages so much that there is limited opportunity for
language learning. This process of erosion is evident not only in contexts with
small, rural, and poor communities speaking varieties that few outsiders learn,
but also in places where English or other powerful languages gradually penetrate
the family and other intimate settings. This process is taking place in Kenya, for
example, where English is increasingly spoken in the home, especially in urban
settings, among the middle class, and in households with individuals speaking
different mother tongues; and in Singapore, where English has gradually dis-
placed Malay and Chinese in many homes (Chew, 2007). In such circum-
stances, the best response for threatened communities may be an effort to
expand the language to as many domains as possible, including local govern-
ment, business, and education. This effort is under way in the Andes region and
in Native America, where Navajo has become the language of higher education
and local government in some contexts. An important direction for language
policy research is the effort to specify the conditions under which diglossia offers
protection for minority languages and those in which it may not.
(5) The importance of the legal framework for language policy. Since the 1990s,
research in language policy has acknowledged that policies must be understood
within their historical, political, economic, social, and cultural context. Particu-
larly important in many settings is the role of the legal and constitutional frame-
work in which language policies are formulated, interpreted, and implemented.
In Kenya, for example, the new constitution presents a new framework for the
relationship between English and Kiswahili. Although this new framework does
Language Policy and Democratic Pluralism   305

not guarantee that Kiswahili will achieve functional parity or equal status with
English, it nevertheless provides supporters of Kiswahili promotion policies with
a new discourse and a new legal framework for the policymaking process.
Research in language policy should explicitly explore such frameworks,
particularly the complex impact of legal precedence, statutory law and constitu-
tional law, and common practice. In the United States, for example, the consti-
tutional principles of due process and freedom of speech have provided a legal
framework for some language rights (e.g., in the case of Meyer v. Nebraska),
while the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barring discrimination on
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the basis of race, color, or national origin have been the basis for other claims of
language rights in schools (e.g., the case of Lau v. Nichols). In the School District
of Philadelphia, the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law was
the basis for policies promoted by both supporters and opponents of bilingual
education. Although Johnson’s of analysis of language policy in Philadelphia
clearly demonstrates that the views of individual administrators in the District
had enormous impact on policies, all administrators felt constrained by the law
and provided rationales for their proposed policies grounded in NCLB. Thus,
while individuals mattered in policymaking in Philadelphia, the discursive and
legal framework was also central to the entire policymaking process. As these
cases suggest, research should shed a brighter light on the legal framework for
language policies in education.
(6) The importance of community involvement in policymaking. Language policies
to support language maintenance and revitalization must involve members of
the communities involved in these processes. As Coronel-­Molina emphasizes,
successful language maintenance and revitalization programs require major social
commitments and long-­term involvement. For such programs to succeed,
members of communities that programs seek to serve must be able to design
and implement the programs. The administrator in Philadelphia who was com-
mitted to teachers’ involvement in the design of bilingual education programs
argued that school-­based individuals must “own” the projects if they are to be
successful. Even more fundamentally, language learning and language use
depend on individuals, families, and the broader community having a deep stake
in the outcomes of these language processes. This commitment is evident in
programs in Native American communities and in efforts by a new generation
of Malaitan elders and adults to engage traumatized children in school, after they
were forced to flee their homes to overcrowded schools in areas with indifferent
or hostile populations.
In such circumstances, commitments to language maintenance and revitaliza-
tion can rarely be imposed successfully by policymakers seeking top-­down
implementation of their programs. The case of the Caribbean Coast of Nicara-
gua shows that top-­down policies may not be able to deal with the complex
social ecology of identities and languages that often characterizes multilingual
communities. A far more effective path to successful programs is through
306   J. W. Tollefson

b­ ottom-­up, democratic decision-­making processes. In Freeland’s words, “com-

munities themselves [must] decide whether, when and how to realize their right
to an education in their ‘mother tongue.’ ”
(7) Variable methods in language policy research. As research on language policies
has expanded outward from classroom concerns (medium of instruction, teacher
training, and the development of textbooks, materials, and tests) to the broader
society (economic development, governance, language ideologies, and the pol-
itics of language), a wider range of research methods has become necessary.
Analysis of the legal framework for language policies requires special skills in
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legal analysis. Understanding the economic causes and consequences of language

learning, language loss, and language shift requires training in economics, statist-
ics, and quantitative research methods. The close connection between policies
and ideologies can be understood through anthropological linguistics, cultural
studies, and discourse analysis. Because language policies are so closely linked
with political processes, political theory offers an important lens through which
policymaking can be better understood. Interpretive policy analysis and the
study of language policy as a “discourse on language and society” (Blommaert,
1996) offer powerful and productive approaches to language policy research.
The analysis of language policies as the lived experiences of individuals and
groups, which acknowledges the complex, daily policymaking that takes place
in all communities, requires ethnographic and other qualitative methods.
As McGroarty’s chapter suggests, the proliferation of research methods
reflects the expanding notion of what constitutes “language policy” as a field of
analysis. As attention has widened from policies of the nation-­state to a range of
institutions, communities, and other actors, and from formal, explicit policy
statements to implicit and “covert” policies (Tollefson, 1988) and the daily lived
experiences of individuals and communities, variable research methods are
necessary. As an academic discipline that began as recently as the 1960s (Tollef-
son, 2010), language policy is beginning to develop a systematic set of appropri-
ate research methods to handle the multiplicity of issues that the field confronts.

Language Policy and the Crisis of Democracy

In his history of the 20th century, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm
expressed his deep concern about the future of humanity when he wrote that
“the structures of human societies themselves, including even some of the social
foundations of the capitalist economy, are on the point of being destroyed”
(1994, pp. 584–585). At the center of his concern is the crisis of democracy: the
failure of political systems in the world’s leading “democracies” (among them,
the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan) to find
solutions to the major problems facing humanity.
At the center of the crisis of democracy is the collapse of democratic proc-
esses of decision making. As economic inequality intensifies and political leaders
Language Policy and Democratic Pluralism   307

answer not to popular will but to the narrow interests of corporate capitalism
and a tiny group of very wealthy individuals, a range of constitutional, statutory,
and bureaucratic changes have closed off access to political systems for all but
the few, who are able to use the overwhelming power of their wealth in order
to shape policies for their own narrow interests. The result is that national elec-
tions are too often hollow exercises and local decision makers are overwhelmed
by the influence of wealthy and powerful interests. Simultaneously, working-­
class and middle-­class organizations such as labor unions, professional associ-
ations, and political parties that represent them are weakened, in part as a result
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of changes that have been imposed by wealthy interests through “democratic

processes” in which great wealth overwhelms the voice of the majority of cit-
izens (e.g., the end of collective bargaining by public employees in some areas
of the United States).
Workers in professions that only a few years ago were perceived as essential
to the health of any society – teachers, firefighters, and municipal workers who
plow snow, repair damaged utilities, and drive the buses – now find themselves
under attack by politicians and, especially in Europe, technocrats from finance
who have replaced elected political leaders (e.g., in Italy and Greece). Workers
have been losing jobs by the millions, along with their pensions, health care,
and other forms of deferred salary that were won during the great workers’
struggles of the 1920s–1950s. Demoralized by nearly 30 years of economic
retreat and political setbacks, especially in North America and Europe, many
people have been torn between the appeal of right-­wing demagogues in politics
and the media on the one hand, and progressive people’s movements of solid-
arity on the other. But regardless of their drift toward right-­wing or left-­wing
politics, the working class and middle class in many countries have been, since
the 1980s, increasingly excluded from decision-­making processes.
At the same time, owing to migration and other processes of global capital-
ism, ethnic and linguistic diversity have increased in many states. When com-
bined with the widespread anxiety caused by the social changes described in
Chapter 2, this diversity can be exploited by political leaders who use divide-­
and-rule discourses to split voters and block democratic movements for change.
It is crucial to remember that ethnolinguistic conflict is often created by political
leaders and powerful demagogues seeking to manufacture and manipulate social
divisions. In Solomon Islands, for example, resentment about real social prob-
lems on Guadalcanal was directed against Malaitan migrants rather than govern-
ment and corporate interests whose policies and actions were responsible for
those problems. In the state of Arizona in the United States, Spanish-­speaking
immigrants are under enormous economic pressure, with employment increas-
ingly restricted by law, under the watch of armed vigilantes who patrol the
border between the United States and Mexico, with encouragement from state
and national politicians – even though Latinos in Arizona are not responsible for
the immense economic and social problems facing the state.
308   J. W. Tollefson

When unemployment reaches 10% or 20% or 30%, someone must be

blamed, and convenient targets include the Other: “foreigners,” “illegal immi-
grants,” “Muslims,” “terrorists,” and the “poor.” Ethnolinguistic tensions are
thereby created and sustained, providing political leaders with a rationale for
repressive responses that create two categories of individuals: those who enjoy
full rights and privileges and those who do not (Kymlicka, 1995). Thus, rights
and privileges are rationed by means of repressive language policies that vary
widely from one context to another (e.g., Turkey, Rwanda, France, and the
United States).
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The alternative to repressive language policies is democratic pluralism, which

means establishing and supporting institutions, regulations, and decision-­making
systems and practices that ensure the widest possible participation in policymak-
ing by all social, economic, cultural, and linguistic groups. Extending democratic
pluralism involves seeking an end to discrimination based on ascribed categories
such as language and ethnicity, and finding ways to ensure that individuals and
groups who are affected by policies have direct involvement and power in poli-
cymaking. Any serious effort to end discrimination necessarily means reducing
excessive social and economic inequality based on language and ethnicity. The
process of reducing inequality requires commitment to some of the fundamental
values of the 20th century: equality under the law; freedom from discrimination
on the basis of language; the right to self-­expression; the right to use one’s own
language in the community; and the right to full and equal access to education.
All of these values are central to democratic pluralism.
But herein is the fundamental paradox: as global capitalism intensifies eco-
nomic inequality, and as democratic political systems are hollowed out by the
overwhelming influence of corporate power, democratic pluralism inevitably
becomes a challenge to capitalism itself. Thus, human societies face a profound
question: Can global political and economic systems function democratically, or
are they inevitably controlled and manipulated in order to block access to
decision making for all but the few?
In the conclusion to the first edition of this book, I raised this issue by
asking: How can democratic forms of governance be developed at a time of
increasing domination by supranational structures of decision making? As the
nation-­state and national cultural identities weaken and traditional forms of state
decision making collapse, many people turn to ethnolinguistic nationalism to
protect themselves (as in Solomon Islands) or to regain a sense of belonging and
hope for the future (as in Japan). The anti-­globalization movement is, in part,
manifest in ethnolinguistic nationalist movements (as in Philippines, Kenya,
Pakistan, Mexico, Spain, and elsewhere). Some states respond with repressive
policies, such as exclusion of minority languages from education (the United
States, France), immigration restrictions (Germany), and military repression
(Turkey) – all of which risk violating human rights and driving even more
people into ethnolinguistic national movements. Other states respond by
Language Policy and Democratic Pluralism   309

seeking an accommodation with global capitalism, often by teaching the global

language of English, weakening support for or transforming national cultural
identities, or privatizing educational systems so they more directly serve corpor-
ate interests. In this book, we have seen several examples of such responses, as
in India, Lesotho, and Rwanda. Other states tread carefully between a commit-
ment to globalization and a reassertion of patriotic nationalism (e.g., Japan).
Yet all of these efforts have thus far failed to respond adequately to the crisis
of democracy and the profound insecurity that accompanies threats to commun-
ity languages and cultures worldwide. As a result, right-­wing nationalist move-
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ments that demand “authentic” national roots based on mythic histories of the
“People” may be strengthened, even in contexts such as Japan, where most lan-
guage policies are not repressive and the main community language is secure.
The challenge, therefore, is to develop conceptions of citizenship that protect
and acknowledge the fundamental social identity function of language while at the
same time ensuring full access to dominant languages that are crucial for full partici-
pation in education, the economy, and the political system. The only way to do so
is through increased democratic pluralism. In the swirling turmoil of global change,
such an effort may seem quixotic, but the alternative is unacceptable: increasing
powerlessness in the face of globalization, the rising threat of repressive forms of
governance, and the social unrest that Annamalai fears is inevitable if socioeconomic
inequality continues to intensify. In other words, it is precisely because of the funda-
mental threat that globalization creates for communities, languages, and cultures that
citizenship must be ideologically and discursively linked to democratic pluralism.
Thus, democratic decision-­making processes must be developed in which all
language communities are full participants. It is only by extending democratic
pluralism that humanity can create realistic and progressive alternatives to
restrictive and repressive language policies, so that multilingual language use –
inevitable, pervasive, and in all of its astonishing complexity – can be openly
and enthusiastically protected for all. The chapters in this book point to this
essential conclusion: that our decisions about language policies in education
matter to the survival of democracy itself.

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CONTRIBUTORS
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E. Annamalai, University of Chicago

Serafín M. Coronel-­Molina, Indiana University, Bloomington
Jane Freeland, University of Southampton
David Welchman Gegeo, University of Canterbury
Kayoko Hashimoto, University of Queensland
David Cassels Johnson, Washington State University
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu, Howard University
Alamin Mazrui, Rutgers University
Teresa L. McCarty, Arizona State University
Mary McGroarty, Northern Arizona University
Beth Lewis Samuelson, Indiana University, Bloomington
James W. Tollefson, University of Hong Kong
Karen Ann Watson-­Gegeo, University of California, Davis
Terrence G. Wiley, Center for Applied Linguistics and Arizona State University
INDEX
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Page numbers in italics denote tables.

accountability 45–6, 50, 120–2, 124, 126, Beecher Report 142

130, 132 bilingual education 5–6, 12–13, 16, 19,
Advocates for Indigenous California 59, 301, 305; in Nicaragua 97, 107,
Language Survival 264 109; in School District of Philadelphia
Alaska Native(s) 256–7, 260 119–34; in United States 61, 63–4,
Alidou, H. 17 66–7, 68, 71, 72, 75–6, 79–85, 268
All India Educational Survey 198 Bilingual Education Act (1968) 66, 75, 79,
alternative teacher certification 45–6, 49–50 120, 259
ambivalent policy 195 boarding schools (Indian) 71, 79, 258
American Indian(s) 65–6, 70, 257–9, 264 Bolivia 278–95
American Indian community-controlled Boyte, H. 52
school movement 260 Brown v. Topeka, Kansas Board of Education
American Indian Language Development (1954) 259
Institute 264 Burundi 215–16, 218, 223
American Indian Movement (AIM) 259,
271n2 Central Advisory Board of Education
American insularity 41 196
Anderson, B. 14, 101 Centre d’Etudes de Langue Indigènes
Annamalai, E. 8, 29, 173, 191, 309 d’Amérique 284
Arizona 5, 46, 59, 67, 68, 82–4, 260, Centro de Comunicación y Desarrollo
271n3, 301, 307 Andino de Bolivia 283
Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación charter schools 45–7, 50–1; accountability
Radiofónica (ALER) 285 of 45–6, 50; diversity in 45, 47; growth
Asociación Mundial de Radios of 3, 5, 45, 49–50, 143, 216; online
Comunitarias (AMARC) 285 instruction in 47–8
assessment 41, 44, 48–53, 61, 185 Chilcotin 265, 269
Ayllupak Kawsay (TV in Quechua) 287 citizenship 27, 39, 42, 52, 84–5, 109, 247,
Aymara 10, 278–300, 302–3 302–3, 309
Aymara Uta, Aymarata Global Voices Civil Rights Act (1964) 66, 81, 259, 305
(Internet) 288 Civilization Act (1819) 258
Index   313

Cobarrubias, J. 106 308; in Rwanda 209, 211–16, 220; in

commercial involvement in education 40, Solomon Islands 239
44–5, 206 ethnography 27, 116, 118–19, 216, 256
communication, meaning of, in language ethnolinguistic nationalism 22, 24, 308
policy in Japan 180–2, 186–8 expediency oriented language policies 71,
Constitution of California 79 72
Constitution of India 193, 195, 197
Constitution of Kenya 7, 137–40, 148, fa‘amanata‘anga (traditional education) 233,
150–4 240, 243–4
Constitution of Nicaragua 94, 110n2 Fishman, J.A. 14, 36, 165, 294, 304
Constitution of Peru 280 footing 6, 116, 119–20, 168
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Constitution of Rwanda 213–15 foreign languages 8, 41, 47, 78, 179,

Constitution of the United States 77, 81, 182–3, 185–8; neglect of 42
84, 258, 301, 304–5, 307 Foucault, M. 60, 118–19, 133
continuance (cultural) see cultural foundations (non-profit) 1, 50–1
continuance Freeland, J. 6, 29, 59, 91, 96, 303–4, 306
Cooper, R. 165–6 French 8, 18–19, 64, 140, 158–9, 302; in
Coronel-Molina, S.M. 10, 25, 253, 278, Rwanda 209–25
280, 282, 302, 305
Course of Study (Japan) 176, 179, 181, Gadelii, K. 278
183–8 game theory 7, 156–7, 163, 166
Creole (in Nicaragua) 93–5, 97, 99, 100, Gegeo, D.W. 9, 29, 209, 233
103–5, 109 genocide ideology 214
critical discourse analysis 118, 176 Glass, G. 45–6
critical language policy 116–17, 133 globalization 1, 4, 13, 19–24, 28, 37–9,
Cuban, L. 45 301–2, 308–9; as anti-nationalist process
cultural continuance 9, 245, 247, 253, 24; economic 21–2, 63, 234–6; and
255–6, 260, 264–6, 270–1 English 21, 24–5, 219, 253, 301; and
cultural identity 8, 164, 173, 176, 234 language loss 23–4, 302; and social
change 19–25, 41, 235
democratic pluralism 10, 30, 308–9 Goffman, E. 119–20, 125
diglossia 254, 283, 286, 304 governmentality 6, 25, 60, 116, 118–19
Drogheda Report 143 Grin, F. 106
Dual Mandate 141 Guadalcanal 9, 209, 233–7, 239–41, 246,
307
East African Royal Commission Report Guale 234, 236–8
144
Economic Opportunity Act (1964) 259 Haenlein, M. 289
educated person (concept of) 242 Harsanyi, J. 156
Education for All 197–8, 226–7 Hashimoto, K. 8, 24, 173, 175, 308
Elementary and Secondary Education Act Hawai‘i 65–6, 73–4, 78, 263, 266
(1965) 120, 259 Hawai‘i Creole English 63, 73–4
elite closure 7, 158–9, 163, 167 Hawaiian language 64, 71, 74, 257, 263,
English education 65, 143, 176, 179, 194, 266
198, 200, 202 historical-structural approach see language
Esther Martinez Native American policy research
Languages Preservation Act (2006) 264 Hopi 259, 266
ethnicity 8, 9, 43, 72, 80, 91, 94–9, 101, Hornberger, N. 98, 107, 117–18, 270,
104, 110n1, n2, 303, 308; contact zone 280
91, 93, 95, 99; and identity 92, 97–100, Human Rights Center, University of
102–4, 108–9, 110n2; and language California 212
8–9, 43, 72, 80, 211, 213–16, 220, 239, Humboldt, W.V. 15–16
308; and nationalism 22, 24, 98, 104, Hutu 8, 209, 211, 213–15, 217, 220–1
314   Index

Hymes, D. 256 Laitin, D. 158, 163

Lakoff, G. 44–5
immigration see migration language(s): ecologies 6, 60, 93, 267–8;
India 8, 22, 24, 29, 109, 173, 191–205, endangered 10, 91, 257, 267, 279;
205n2, 301–3, 309 ideologies 5–6, 24, 30, 36, 43, 59, 92,
Indian Education Act (1972) 259 109, 118, 132–3, 158, 253, 256, 266–8,
Indian Self-determination and Education 270, 303, 306; as marketing problem
Assistance Act (1975) 259 157, 166; standardization 101–2
indigenous critical praxis 235 language economics 157, 166
indigenous epistemology 249 language and identity 1, 4, 6, 8–9, 12–17,
Indigenous Language Institute 264 24–5, 37, 59, 164–5, 303, 309; in
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indigenous youth 9, 17, 29, 253, 256–7, Andes region 288–9; in India 199; in
264–71, 303 Japan 176–8; in Native America 256,
indigenous/ethnic minorities in Nicaragua 266–70; in Nicaragua 97–104, 108–9;
91, 93–4, 96, 98, 101, 103–4, 107–8, in Rwanda 212–14; in Solomon Islands
110n1, n2; Garífuna 93, 95, 99–100, 234, 238, 244, 248; in United States
103, 107; Mestizos 93, 104; Miskitu 128
93–5, 97, 99–103, 106–7, 109, 110n2, language policy arbiter 6, 120, 126, 133
n4; Rama 93–5, 99–100, 103, 107; language policy research: historical-
Sumu-Mayangna 93–5, 101–13, 110n2, structural approach 26–9; methods
n4; Ulwa 93, 95, 100, 103, 107, 110n2 25–9; neoclassical approach 26; public
inequality 4, 13, 21, 30 sphere approach 27–9
intercultural-bilingual education 6, 107 language revitalization 9–10, 39, 100, 103,
Isatabu Freedom Movement (IFM) 237–9 106–7, 109, 257, 263–6, 278, 281–3,
289, 291–7, 301, 305
Japan 7–8, 20, 22, 173, 175–88, 241, 246, language rights 3, 5–6, 10–11, 17, 301,
301–2, 306, 308–9 303, 305; discourse of 92, 106, 108–9,
Japanese language 8, 179–81, 186–7, 302 303; in Native America 254–5, 264; in
Jaqi Aru (Blog, Twitter, and Facebook in Nicaragua 6, 92–103, 106–9; in
Aymara) 290 Solomon Islands 242; in United States
Johnson, D.C. 6, 18, 27, 29, 60, 79, 82, 5, 61–3, 65–6, 69, 70–1, 75, 84
116, 118, 234, 259, 305 language shift 4, 9, 17, 22, 25, 64, 95,
146, 211, 219, 262, 265–7, 271n3, 288,
Kagame, P. 214–15, 218–19 306
Kamwangamalu, N.K. 7, 137, 156 Lau v. Nichols et al. 66–7, 78–82, 305
Kaplan, A. 289 LeClerc, J. 218
Kelman, H.H. 16 Leibowitz, A.H. 64–5, 67, 68, 72–3, 84,
Kenya 7, 19, 26, 29, 137, 139–54, 216, 301
218–19, 301, 304, 308; see also Lesotho 7, 137, 156–68, 301, 309
Constitution of Kenya linguistic fractionalization 226
Kenya National Examination Council linguistic marketplace 156, 161, 166, 168
148–9, 152 literacy 13, 23, 36, 57, 127–9; in Andes
Kenyatta, J. 150 region 281–2; in Nicaragua 94, 99–105;
Kinyarwanda 8, 209, 211–13, 215–17, in Rwanda 225; in Solomon Islands
220–2, 224–5, 227 243; in United States 62–3, 65, 72–3,
Kiptoon, J. 149 75, 76, 77–8
Kirundi 216 Lugard, Lord F. 141
Kiswahili 7, 19–20, 137, 139–54, 164, Luke, A. 234–5, 248
213, 304–5
Kothari Commission 196–7 Malaita 9, 209, 233–48, 248n1
Kwara‘ae 9, 233–5, 237–9, 241–6 Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) 237–9, 247
Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School v.
labelling 180, 182 Ann Arbor Board of Education 66, 74–5
Index   315

mass media 278, 282–3, 287–8, 291, 294 84, 247, 250, 255–9, 261–2, 264–5,
Master-Apprentice Language Learning 267, 270, 303, 305; languages 67, 71,
Program (MALLP) 262 72, 79, 257, 262, 264; people 256–7;
Mayachat Aymara 290 tribes 256, 258–9, 271n2, n3
Mazrui, A. 7, 29, 137, 139, 143 Native American Languages Act
McCarty, T.L. 9, 17, 29, 43, 253, 255, (1990/1992) 71, 79, 264
271n1, n3, 303 Native Language Shift and Retention
McGroarty, M. 1, 5, 306 Study 271n3
Medicine, B. 255, 259, 270–1 native speaker(-ism) 73, 83, 176, 182, 188,
Meyer v. Nebraska 66, 78–9, 305 242, 257, 263, 291
Miami language 267 Navajo (Diné) 257–62, 265–6, 303–4
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migration 4, 9, 14, 22–4, 59, 64, 77–9, neoclassical approach see language policy
234, 236–7, 240–2, 245–6, 253, 301, research
304, 307–8 new functional domains 10, 278
military and language policy 18–19 New Language Policy Studies 29, 256
Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, New Primary Approach 145
Sports and Technology (MEXT) Nicaragua 6, 29, 59, 91–110, 301, 303–4;
178–80, 183–4, 187 Autonomy Statute 96; Sandinista
monolingualism 75, 76, 98, 159 revolution 6, 91; see also indigenous/
Moravian Mission 104 ethnic minorities in Nicaragua
mother-tongue 5, 16, 59, 61–3, 92, Njonjo, C. 150
97–104, 106–8, 110n4, 139, 141, No Child Left Behind 6, 29, 49, 60, 75,
147–8, 157, 160, 162, 179, 182, 194–6, 83, 120, 131, 134, 305
200–4, 225–7, 258–9, 291, 294, 304, null language policies 71, 74
306 Nussbaum, M. 41
Mudaliyar Commission 195 Nye, J. 40
multilingualism 3, 12, 23, 37, 94, 99, 117,
120, 144, 158–9, 163, 167, 199, 203–4, official language 7–8, 18–19, 301–3; in
227 India 196–7, 200; in Japan 177–8; in
multimodal resources 278 Kenya 137, 139, 150, 158, 160–2,
Mutahi, K. 149 168n1; in Nicaragua 97, 110, 116, 127;
in Peru 280–1; in Rwanda 211–15,
National Alliance to Save Native 218–19, 225; in Solomon Islands 242;
Languages 264 in United States 63, 67, 72, 82, 84
National Curriculum Framework 199 Official Language Act 160
national identity 8, 12, 14, 16, 176, 238, Official Language Bill 139
302 Ominde Commission 145–6
National Institute for Japanese Language Oralidad modernidad: hacia el encuentro de las
and Linguistics 179 lenguas indígenas del Ecuador 292
National Knowledge Commission Ortiz, S. 247, 255–6, 270
199–200, 205n2
national language 8, 23–4, 29, 116–17, Pennycook, A. 92, 118, 234
150, 160, 165, 175–6, 178–88, 193, Peru 278–95
213, 216, 280, 302 Phelps-Stokes Commission 141
National Policy on Education 196–7 Philadelphia see School District of
nationalism 4, 12, 13–17, 308; Philadelphia
ethnolinguistic 22, 24, 308; in Europe Pinnock, H. 226
13–20; and identity 14–17; after World Plan to cultivate ‘Japanese with English
War II 20–1 abilities’ 173, 178–9, 187
nation-state 4, 5, 13–27, 37, 93, 98, 306, Portal del cine y el material audiovisual
308 latinoamericano caribeño 287
Native America 9, 29, 255–77, 301, 303 Primary Education Strengthening Project
Native American 29, 64, 66–7, 71, 72, 79, 149
316   Index

Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Kwara‘ae response to crisis 244–5;

Goals in the 21st Century 177 Tenson 233–8, 240–7, 248n1
promotion oriented language policies 71, Stabilizing Indigenous Languages
72 Symposium 264
public sphere approach see language policy Starr, P. 38–9
research State Board of Education 201
Pueblo 266, 279, 287 states’ rights 5, 59, 61, 77–9, 83, 85
status planning 7, 156–8, 163–7, 279
quality education 198, 200, 205 Stewart, W. 278, 280
Quechua 10, 278–300, 302–3 Swahili see Kiswahili
Swaziland 7, 137, 156–68, 301
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Ravitch, D. 45, 50
Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Tenson (Tension) (Solomon Islands)
Islands (RAMSI) 238, 247–8 233–8, 240–7, 248n1
repression oriented language policies 71; theories of justice 52
see also restrictive language policies tolerance oriented language policies 71, 72
restrictive language policies 61, 64–8, 71, Tollefson, J.W. 1, 3–4, 11, 40, 117, 159,
72–3, 78, 117–18, 234, 253, 301, 309; 193, 234, 301
in Arizona 82–4 tribal sovereignty 255, 258
restrictive oriented language policies see Tutsi 8, 209, 211, 213–17, 220–1, 223
restrictive language policies Twa 213–16
right to education 62–3, 69, 100, 197
Rough Rock Demonstration School UNESCO 62, 147, 226, 280, 286
260–1 United States 5, 12, 14–15, 19, 24, 28–9,
rural/village development 9, 233, 236 38–50, 61–85, 120–1, 255–71, 301,
Rwanda 8–9, 19, 209, 211–27, 301–3, 305–8; language policy orientations in
308–9; Genocide of 1994 209, 213; 69–75; language program models 75–6;
Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) Lau v. Nichols et al. 66–7, 78–82, 305;
224; National Curriculum restrictive policies in Arizona 82–4;
Development Center 212; Rwandan right to education 62–3
Patriotic Front 8, 211 Universal Elementary Education (India)
197–8
Samuelson, B.L. 8, 209, 211 URACCAN (University of the
Saqrakuna Primer Programa (TV in Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean
Quechua) 287 Coast of Nicaragua) 100, 105, 107–9
School District of Philadelphia 6, 29, 60, urbanization 4, 22–4
116, 123, 134, 301, 305–6 utility maximization 165
SEAR (Sistema de Educación Autonómo
Regional/Autonomous Regional vernacularization of education 158, 164,
Education System) 107–8 196
seSotho 7, 137, 157–8, 160–8, 168n1, n3
Silverstein, M. 108; language communities War on Poverty 260
versus speech communities 108 Watson-Gegeo, K.A. 9, 29, 209, 233
siSwati 7, 137, 157–8, 161–8, 168n1 Wee, L 164–5
sleeping languages 263, 267 Wiley, T.G. 5, 29, 301
social media 10, 253, 278, 289–2, 294 Wôpanâak (Wampanoag) 263–4
Society of Japanese Linguistics 179 Wortham, S. 119–20
Solomon Islands 9, 29, 233–48, 307;
fa‘amanata‘anga 233, 240, 243–4; Yugoslavia 18–19, 24, 102
indigenous epistemology 234–5; Yup’ik 17, 264, 266