Front cover image for Language policy

Language policy

Language policy is an issue of critical importance in the world today. In this up-to-date introduction, Bernard Spolsky explores many debates at the forefront of language policy: ideas of correctness and bad language; bilingualism and multilingualism; language death and efforts to preserve endangered languages; language choice as a human and civil right; and language education policy. Through looking at the language practices, beliefs, and management of social groups from families to supra-national organizations, he develops a theory of modern national language policy and the major forces controlling it, such as the demands for efficient communication, the pressure for national identity, the attractions of (and resistance to) English as a global language, and the growing concern for human and civil rights as they impinge on language. Two central questions asked in this wide-ranging survey are how to recognize language policies, and whether or not language can be managed at all
Print Book, English, 2004
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004
xi, 250 pages ; 23 cm.
9780521804615, 9780521011754, 9780511615245, 0521804612, 0521011752, 0511615248
52377617
Language practices, ideology and beliefs, and management and planning
Driving out the bad
Pursuing the good and dealing with the new
The nature of language policy and its domains
Two monolingual polities
Iceland and France
How English spread
Does the US have a language policy or just civil rights?
Language rights
Monolingual polities under pressure
Monolingual polities with recognized linguistic minorities
Partitioning language space
two, three, many
Resisting language shift