Drawing on four decades of research, Bernard Spolsky presents an updated theory of language policy that starts with the individual speaker instead of the nation. In this book, he surveys the language practices, beliefs, and planning efforts of individuals, families, public and private institutions, local and national activists, advocates and managers, and nations. He examines the diversity of linguistic repertoires and the multiplicity of forces, linguistic and non-linguistic, which account for language shift and maintenance. By starting with the individual speaker and moving through the various levels and domains, Spolsky shows the many different policies with which a national government must compete and illustrates why national policy is so difficult. A definitive guide to the field, this is essential reading for policy makers, stakeholders, researchers, and students of language policy.

This book challenges the view that digital communication in Africa is limited and relatively unsophisticated and questions the assumption that digital communication has a damaging effect on indigenous African languages. The book applies the principles of Digital African Multilingualism (DAM) in which there are no rigid boundaries between languages. The book charts a way forward for African languages where greater attention is paid to what speakers do with the languages rather than what the languages look like, and offers several models for language policy and planning based on horizontal and user-based multilingualism. The chapters demonstrate how digital communication is being used to form and sustain communication in many kinds of online groups, including for political activism and creating poetry, and offer a paradigm of language merging online that provides a practical blueprint for the decolonization of African languages through digital platforms.

This revised second edition is a comprehensive overview of why we speak the languages that we do. It covers language learning imposed by political and economic agendas as well as language choices entered into willingly for reasons of social mobility, economic advantage and group identity.

Rethinking Languages Education assembles innovative research from experts in the fields of sociocultural theory, applied linguistics and education. The contributors interrogate innovative and recent thinking and broach controversies about the theoretical and practical considerations that underpin the implementation of effective Languages pedagogy in twenty-first-century classrooms. Crucially, Rethinking Languages Education explores established understandings about language, culture and education to provide a more comprehensive and flexible understanding of Languages education that responds to local classrooms impacted by global and transnational change, and the politics of language, culture and identity. Rethinking Languages Education focuses on questions about ways that we can develop farsighted and successful Languages education for diverse students in globalised contexts. The response to these questions is multi-layered, and takes into account the complex interactions between policy, curriculum and practice, as well as their contention and implementation. In doing so, this book addresses and integrates innovative perspectives of contemporary theory and pedagogy for Languages, TESOL and EAL/D education. It includes diverse discussions around practice, and addresses issues of the dominance of prestige Languages programs for ‘minority’ and ‘heritage’ languages, as well as discussing controversies about the current provision of English and Languages programs around the world.

Over the past 40 years, Jim Cummins has proposed a number of highly influential theoretical concepts, including the threshold and interdependence hypotheses and the distinction between conversational fluency and academic language proficiency. In this book, he provides a personal account of how these ideas developed and he examines the credibility of critiques they have generated, using the criteria of empirical adequacy, logical coherence, and consequential validity. These criteria of theoretical legitimacy are also applied to the evaluation of two different versions of translanguaging theory – Unitary Translanguaging Theory and Crosslinguistic Translanguaging Theory – in a way that significantly clarifies this controversial concept.

In this collection of articles, teachers bring students' home languages into their classrooms-from powerful bilingual social justice curriculum to strategies for honoring students' languages in schools that do not have bilingual programs. Bilingual educators and advocates share how they work to keep equity at the center and build solidarity between diverse communities. Teachers and students speak to the tragedy of languages loss, but also about inspiring work to defend and expand bilingual programs. Book jacket.

Linguistic relativity is the claim that culture, through language, affects the way in which we think, and especially our classification of the experienced world. This book reexamines ideas about linguistic relativity in the light of new evidence and changes in theoretical climate. The editors have provided a substantial introduction that summarizes changes in thinking about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in the light of developments in anthropology, linguistics and cognitive science. Introductions to each section will be of especial use to students.