Nancy H. Hornberger

Unpeeling the Onion: Language Planning and Policy and the ELT Professional

The field of language planning and policy (LPP) provides a rich array of research opportunities for applied linguists and social scientists. However, as a multidisciplinary field that seeks to understand, among other things, why some languages thrive whereas others are marginalized, LPP may appear quite theoretical and far removed from the lives of many English language teaching (ELT) practitioners. This is unfortunate, because ELT professionals—be they teachers, program developers, materials and textbook writers, administrators, consultants, or academics—are involved in one way or another in the processes of LPP. The purpose of this article is to unravel those processes and the role of ELT professionals in them for both theoretical and practical reasons: theoretical, because we believe there are principled ways to account for why particular events affect the status and vibrancy of languages and speech communities, and practical, because we believe there are ways to influence the outcome of social processes. In general, we find that the principle of linguistic self-determinism-the right to choose (within limits) what languages one will use and be educated in—is not only viable but desirable for LPP decision making because it both promotes social equity and fosters diversity. In this article, we examine how ELT professionals are already actively engaged in deciding language policies, how they promote policies reaffirming or opposing hierarchies of power that reflect entrenched historical and institutional beliefs (see Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, this issue), and how they might affect changes in their local contexts.

Multilingual language policies and the continua of biliteracy: An ecological approach

The one language—one nation ideology of language policy and national identity is no longer the only available one worldwide (if it ever was). Multilingual language policies,which recognize ethnic and linguistic pluralism as resources for nation-building, are increasingly in evidence. These policies, many of which envision implementation through bilingual intercultural education, open up new worlds of possibility for oppressed indigenous and immigrant languages and their speakers,transforming former homogenizing and assimilationist policy discourses into discourses about diversity and emancipation. This article uses the metaphor of ecology oflanguage to explore the ideologies underlying multilingual language policies, and the continua of biliteracy framework as ecological heuristic for situating the challenges faced in implementing them. Specifically, the paper considers community and classroom challenges inherent in implementing these new ideologies,as they are evident in two nations which introduced transformative policies in the early 1990s: post-apartheid South Africas newConstitution of 1993 and Bolivias National Education Reform of 1994. It concludes with implications for multilingual language policies in the United States and elsewhere.

Continua of Biliteracy

Although biliteracy is common worldwide, relatively little scholarly work has attended explicitly to it. This review draws from the literatures on literacy, bilingualism, and the teaching of reading, writing, and second and foreign languages to propose a framework for understanding biliteracy. It argues that the complex array of possible biliteracy configurations can be accounted for by understanding biliteracy in terms of a series of interrelated continua. These continua define the contexts, individual development, and media of biliteracy, and are as follows: micro-macro, oral-literate, monolingual-bilingual, reception-production, oral language-written language, first and second language transfer, simultaneous-successive exposure, similar-dissimilar language structures, and convergent-divergent scripts. An understanding of the intersecting and nested nature of the continua has implications for teaching and research in biliteracy.

Revisiting the Continua of Biliteracy: International and Critical Perspectives.

The continua model of biliteracy offers a framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings. Arguing from this model, and citing examples of Cambodian and Puerto Rican students in Philadelphias public schools as illustrative of the challenge facing American educators, Hornberger has suggested that the more their learning contexts allow learners to draw on all points of the continua, the greater are the chances for their full biliterate development. The present paper revisits the continua model from the perspective of several international cases of educational policy and practice in linguistically diverse settings - Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, and from a critical perspective which seeks to make explicit the power relationships which define bi(multi)literacies in these contexts. Building from these perspectives and from continuing research in Philadelphias Cambodian and Puerto Rican communities, we propose an expanded continua model which takes into account not only biliterate contexts, media, and development, but also, crucially, the content of biliteracy. We conclude with comments on how the insights of the continua model of biliteracy can contribute to our understanding not only of linguistically diverse classrooms, but also of all classrooms.

Language Policy, Language Education, Language Rights: Indigenous, Immigrant, and International Perspectives.

Indigenous languages are under siege, not only in the US but around the world – in danger of disappearing because they are not being transmitted to the next generation. Immigrants and their languages worldwide are similarly subjected to seemingly irresistible social, political, and economic pressures. This article discusses a number of such cases, including Shawandawa from the Brazilian Amazon, Quechua in the South American Andes, the East Indian communities of South Africa, Khmer in Philadelphia, Welsh, Maori, Turkish in the UK, and Native Californian languages. At a time when phrases like “endangered languages” and “linguicism” are invoked to describe the plight of the worlds vanishing linguistic resources in their encounter with the phenomenal growth of world languages such as English, the cases reviewed here provide consistent and compelling evidence that language policy and language education serve as vehicles for promoting the vitality, versatility, and stability of these languages, and ultimately promote the rights of their speakers to participate in the global community on and IN their own terms. (Endangered languages, immigrant languages, indigenous languages, language revitalization, linguicism)

Literacy and language planning

Abstract In a world which is simultaneously coming together as a global society while it splinters apart into ever smaller ethnically‐defined pieces, the two‐faced potential of literacy to both open and bar doors of opportunity becomes increasingly evident. Nowhere are these tensions more evident than in multilingual nations, where literacy development faces the challenge of attending to a multilingual population, many of whom do not speak the countrys official language. A persistent model of literacy development has been that of national literacy; competing models include mother tongue literacy, multiple literacies, local literacies, and biliteracies, all of which have in common notions of a variety and diversity of literacies, reflective and constitutive of specific contexts and identities. Given such a model of literacy, the question for literacy developers becomes: which literacies to develop for what purpose? Language planning offers a way of outlining options and identifying different literacies an...

Voice and Biliteracy in Indigenous Language Revitalization: Contentious Educational Practices in Quechua, Guarani, and Maori Contexts.

This article considers instances of biliterate educational practice in contexts of indigenous language revitalization involving Quechua in the South American Andes, Guarani in Paraguay, and Māori in Aotearoa/NewZealand. In these indigenous contexts of sociohistorical and sociolinguistic oppression, the implementation of multilingual language policies through multilingual education brings with it choices, dilemmas, and even contradictions in educational practice. I consider examples of such contentious educational practices from an ecological perspective, using the continua of biliteracy and the notion of voice as analytical heuristics. I suggest that the biliterate use of indigenous childrens own or heritage language as medium of instruction alongside the dominant language mediates the dialogism, meaning-making, access to wider discourses, and taking of an active stance that are dimensions of voice. Indigenous voices thus activated can be a powerful force for both enhancing the childrens own learning and promoting the maintenance and revitalization of their languages.

Multilingual education policy and practice: Ten certainties (grounded in Indigenous experience)

Although multilingualism and multilingual education have existed for centuries, our 21st-century entrance into the new millennium has brought renewed interest and contestation around this educational alternative. Ethnolinguistic diversity and inequality, intercultural communication and contact, and global political and economic interdependence are more than ever acknowledged realities of todays world, and all of them put pressures on our educational systems. Now, as throughout history, multilingual education offers the best possibilities for preparing coming generations to participate in constructing more just and democratic societies in our globalized and intercultural world; however, it is not unproblematically achieved. There are many unanswered questions and doubts as to policy and implementation, program and curricular design, classroom instruction practices, pedagogy, and teacher professional development, but there is also much that we understand and know very well, based on empirical research in many corners of the world. Here I highlight Bolivian and other Indigenous educational experiences with which I am most familiar, and which capture certainties that hold beyond the particular instances I describe. My emphasis is on what we know and are sure of, and my goal is to convey my deep conviction that multilingual education constitutes a wide and welcoming educational doorway toward peaceful coexistence of peoples and especially restoration and empowerment of those who have been historically oppressed.

Multilingual language policy and school linguistic practice: globalization and English‐language teaching in India, Singapore and South Africa

This paper explores tensions in translating multilingual language policy to classroom linguistic practice, and especially the paradoxical role of and demand for English as a tool of decolonization for multilingual populations seeking equitable access to a globalizing economy. We take an ecological and sociolinguistic approach, depicting tensions between multilingualism and English across three national cases, at both policy and classroom level. Despite Indias egalitarian Three Language Formula (TLF) of 1968, many Indian children are being educated in a language which is not their mother tongue. Singapores bilingual education policy with English medium of instruction and mother tongues taught as second languages nevertheless leaves the linguistic capital of multilingual children who speak a pidginized variety of English called ‘Singlish’ out of the equation, since the school medium is standard English. South Africas Constitution of 1993 embraces multilingualism as a national resource, raising nine major African languages to national official status alongside English and Afrikaans, yet with the freedom of movement accompanying the dismantling of apartheid, large numbers of African language‐speaking parents seek to place their children in English‐medium instructional contexts. Given the push for English and simultaneous official valuing of multilingualism in all three cases, we briefly consider illustrative classroom examples and argue that multilingual classroom practices can be a resource through which children access Standard English while also cultivating their own local languages.

Bilingual Education Success, but Policy Failure

In 1977, a bilingual education project began in rural areas of Puno, Peru, as a direct result of Perus 1972 Education Reform. This paper presents results of an ethnographic and sociolinguistic study comparing Quechua language use and maintenance between: 1) a bilingual education school and community, and 2) a nonbilingual education school and community. Classroom observation indicated a significant change in teacher–pupil language use and an improvement in pupil participation in the bilingual education school. Community observation and interviews indicated that community members both valued and used their language. Yet the project has had difficulties expanding or even maintaining its implementation. (Quechua; Puno, Peru; Peru; Andes; bilingual education; classroom language use; ethnography; sociolinguistics; community development; language planning; language maintenance; educational policy)