Engaged language policy and practices

ORI GIN AL PA PER

Engaged language policy and practices

Kathryn A. Davis

Received: 13 September 2013 / Accepted: 16 September 2013

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Scholars concerned with equity issues from a range of fields and disciplines (e.g.,

Block 2008; Luke 2002, 2011; Street 2005) have for some time considered the

complex ideological nature of stated and implied language policies. Specialists

suggest that policies are commonly guided by ideologies such as modernization,

neoliberalism, standardization, and so-called ‘equity of opportunity’ while ignoring

local diversity resources and socioeconomic needs (Canagarajah 2005; Davis et al.

2012; McCarty 2011; Pease-Alvarez and Thompson 2011; Ricento 2008; Shohamy

2006; Tan and Rubdy 2008; Tollefson and Tsui 2004). Whereas ideological

analyses form the basis for understanding language and education policy intent, this

thematic issue argues that critical engagement is at the center of transformative and

agentive language practices (Maaka et al. 2011; Smith 2012). The editor and authors

of this issue hold that it is situated action—collaboratively designing and doing

social welfare equity—that brings substantive meaning to our language policy and

planning endeavors. Thus, we advocate, investigate, and portray critically informed

and informing transformative dialogue within and across ideological, institutional,

and situational spaces (Bhabha 1994; Freire 1970; Menken and Garcıa 2010; Willett

and Rosenberger 2005).

This introduction explores engaged language policy and practices (ELP1) as a

conceptual and dialogic approach grounded in critical theory and informed by

political activism. The term ‘‘practices’’ is used to signify a shift from unidirectional

top down enactment of policies and plans towards recognition of the complex

interplay of ideologies and institutional practices that are consequently informed by

or threaten local practices. Moving towards the local suggests acknowledging not

only traditions, but also innovation that realistically meets situated socioeconomic,

K. A. Davis (&)

University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, HI, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

1 For ease of use, the abbreviated ELP acronym indicates both policies and practices.

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Lang Policy

DOI 10.1007/s10993-013-9296-5

educational, health, and other human welfare needs. Tollefson (2013) proposes that

this ‘public sphere’ approach emphasizes the creative agency of both individuals

and communities. He suggests that new directions in critical ethnographic research

(McCarty 2011) provide ‘‘the potential for individuals and groups to resist,

undermine, and alter the trajectory of language policies adopted for the benefit of

powerful groups’’ (Tollefson 2013, p. 27). The new LPP directions explored in this

thematic issue resonate with Tollefson’s call for interdisciplinary approaches that

acknowledge the potential for agency through public spheres, including ‘‘subaltern

counterpublics’’ that challenge discourses of the dominant public sphere (Gegeo and

Watson-Gegeo 2002; Phyak and Bui this issue). Adopting an overall epistemology

of LPP as interdisciplinary, multi-identified, linguistically varied, socially mobile,

and subaltern counterpublic suggests alternative conceptualizations of language

policy and planning.

The process of envisioning engaged LPP approaches suggests first understanding

the sociopolitical dynamics of LPP that has come before and how this historical

legacy relates to more recent LPP and research endeavors. The following section

provides a brief historical overview of sociopolitical, ideological, and epistemo-

logical shifts towards a vision of engaged language policy and practices (ELP).

The sociopolitical dynamics of language policy and planning2

Sociolinguists and sociologists of language have long brought into question their

professional responsibilities within the political arena. Although not identified as

such, Labov’s research and political activism (1972, 1982) served to influence

language policies and practices. For example, his role as expert witness in the

Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School v. Ann Arbor Board of Education led to

educational policies that recognized and addressed linguistic variation between

Black Vernacular and Standard English. Labov subsequently postulated principles

to guide professional involvement in political decision-making. These principles

(Labov 1982, and cited in Wiley 1996, pp. 134–135) include: (1) The principle of

error correction: A researcher who becomes aware of a widespread idea or social

practice with important consequences that is invalidated by his (sic) own data is

obligated to bring this error to the attention of the widest possible audience (p. 172);

(2) The principle of debt incurred: An investigator who has obtained linguistic data

from members of a speech community has an obligation to use the knowledge based

on that data for the benefit of the community, when it has need of it (p. 173); (3) The

principle of linguistic democracy: Linguists support the use of a standard dialect or

language in so far as it is an instrument of wider communication for the general

population, but oppose its use as a barrier to social mobility (p. 186); (4) The

principle of linguistic autonomy: The choice of what language or dialect is to be

used in a given domain of a speech community is reserved to members of that

community (p. 186). In addition to the above four principles, Wiley (1996) points

out that Labov also implicitly states: (5) The principle of representation in the field:

2 This historical review draws on previous publications (Davis 1999, 2009, 2012; Davis et al. 2012a, b).

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Every field that is dominated by members of one group, who study and prescribe

remedies for the ‘‘problems’’ of another, needs to ensure representation from the

target group in order to guarantee that its voice and insights are not excluded and

that assumptions and perspectives of the dominant group are not imposed on it.

(p. 134).

These principles additionally align with the sociopolitical framing of language

maintenance and shift by Joshua Fishman. Fishman (e.g., 1985, 1987, 1991, 1992)

played a leading role in spotlighting ideologies that led to minority language loss while

promoting development of local and heritage languages. An important contribution

developed by Fishman (1992) is the Graduated Intergenerational Dislocation Scale

(GIDS), which provides marginalized language groups guidelines to simultaneously

determine rate of language loss and plan for language revitalization and maintenance.

Also at the linguistic political forefront since the early 1980s are Tove Skutnabb-

Kangas and Robert Phillipson who vigorously attacked linguistic imperialism and

language genocide while relentlessly advocating for language rights, linguistic self-

determination, and multilingualism (e.g., Phillipson 1992; Skutnabb-Kangas 1990).

Although many applied linguists have made important contributions in the political

arena, the overall field of language planning traditionally lacked comprehensive data

and advocacy concerning the social, cultural, political, and economic conditions of

language use and attitudes. Tollefson (1991) and Wiley (1996, 1999) provided early

analyses of language planning studies ranging on a continuum from the neoclassical

approach to the more recent historical-structural approach. According to Tollefson

(1991, p. 31), the major differences between these two approaches are: (1) the

neoclassical emphasizes individual choices, whereas the historical-structural consid-

ers the influence of socio-historical factors on language use; (2) the neoclassical

approach tends to focus more on the current language situation; the historical-

structural approach considers the past relationships between groups; (3) the

neoclassical approach often presents its evaluations in ahistorical and amoral terms,

whereas the historical–structural approach is concerned with issues of class

dominance and oppression; and (4) the neoclassical model typically assumes that

the field of applied linguistics and teachers are apolitical while the historical-structural

approach concludes that a political stance is inescapable, for those who avoid political

questions inadvertently support the status quo. Tollefson’s analysis strongly parallels

Street’s (1984, 1993) autonomous and ideological models and suggests that the

neoclassical-autonomous camp had generally dominated the field of language

planning up until the mid-1990s. A historical-structural approach to analyses of

language policies and plans was subsequently adopted by scholars such as LoBianco

(1999), Moore (1996), Pennycook (1995), Phillipson (1988, 1992), Skutnabb-Kangas

(1990), Street (1994), Tollefson (1995), and Wiley (1996, 1999). Wiley specifically

pointed out the need for analyses of the political, economic, and ideological

motivations behind development of language policies. Wiley (1996) further addressed

the ways in which, based on sociopolitical and economic motivations, politicians

manufacture consent among their constituency (see also Apple 1989). LoBianco

(1999) encapsulated these notions of motivation and the manufacturing of consent

through analyses of political Discourse in which ‘‘the object of language planning’s

attentions is also the means of its making, viz language.’’ (p. 69). For example,


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LoBianco describes the ways in which English Only Discourse in the US is framed and

presented to the general public in terms of advancing the empowerment of linguistic

minorities through claiming English language ‘‘qualities of opportunity, worldliness

and success’’ as opposed to native language associations with ‘‘poverty, isolation and

marginality’’ (p. 69).

Recognition of the historical-structural approach to language planning has

subsequently further promoted analyses of the social, political, and economic

motivations behind language policies as well as the political discourses which serve

to advance these policies. This approach also suggests political advocacy along the

lines suggested by Labov (1982). However, several issues central to the field of

language policy and planning are not (nor are they necessarily intended to be)

addressed by the historical-structural approach. Wiley (1999) pointed out the need

to ‘‘expand (the) comparative historical knowledge base further by focusing on the

process of language policy formation and the subsequent differential impact of LPP

on various language minority groups’’ (p. 17). He further argued for ‘‘undertaking

comparative case studies of both immigrant and indigenous language minority

groups and through comparative studies across various social, economic, and

political domains’’ (1999, p. 33). This call for comparative case studies further

suggests the need for an overarching philosophy of research to adequately allow for

language policy and practice theory-building. From a practice perspective, the

historical-structural approach provides the tools for groups and individuals to

understand the ways in which linguistic power differentials can create conditions of

oppression as well as provide guidelines for reversing these conditions at a policy

level (Wiley 1996). However, this approach does not address the actual needs and

purposes of language and literacy within particular communities or offer ways in

which to engage communities in informed and active determination of policies and

practices that transcend transnational and national neoliberal language commodi-

fication agendas. The following section provides an historical overview of the

philosophy and methods that have predominately characterized historical-structural

LPP studies (e.g., Davis 1994, 1999; Hornberger 1988; McCarty 2011).

The sociopolitical dynamics of research and reporting

Ethnographers have long engaged in socio-cultural studies of first language

socialization, language development, and situated language use. These and other

qualitative researchers have influenced or been influenced by epistemological stances

arising from modernism and postmodernism eras. Yet rather than a chronology of

social science shifts (Grbich 2004), these eras present ongoing melding and crossing-

over of epistemological, theoretical, and methodological approaches depending on

individual and normative institutional views. During the modernist era, anthropologist

Hymes (1974) proposed the ethnography of communication in response to the

cognitively and post-positivist defined second language acquisition research para-

digm. He argued that speech acts and other communicative events cannot be fully

understood without attending to culture and context. Hymes ethnographic social

constructivist theories and methods subsequently influenced studies of cross-cultural

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communication in classrooms (Cazden et al. 1972); participation structure differences

between community and classroom interactive norms (Philips 1983); and compre-

hensive analysis of sociocultural language and literacy expectations in racially,

economically, and culturally diverse communities (Heath 1983). Yet Hymes also

argued against one-sided ethnographic research and reporting; rather, he proposed

ethnographic monitoring as a form of research that is processual and highly

collaborative. He suggests sharing knowledge about home/school language and social

practices among all interested educational actors, including the ethnographer (Hymes

1981; Van der Aa and Blommaert 2011). He essentially proposes ongoing mutual

inquiry rather than simply ‘‘reporting back’’, given his view that intensive and genuine

cooperation is at the heart of ethnographic monitoring (Hymes and Fought 1981,

pp. 10–11). He further argues that ‘‘a framework starting with issues identified by

teachers, and continuing cooperation may make findings more acceptable and likely to

be utilized’’ (Hymes and Fought 1981, p. 13). At about the same time, anthropologist

Geertz (1983) brought into question the nature of reality and the centrality of local

studies. More specifically, he argued that all anthropological writings are interpre-

tations of interpretations and, thus, the observer has no special insight into reality.

Geertz suggested that ethnographers explore local situations and acknowledge the

interpretive nature of analyses and presentation of findings. He also argued that an

interpretive approach implies the blurring of boundaries between the social sciences

and humanities. Researchers subsequently have sought new models of truth, method,

and (multimodal) representation while increasingly engaging in reflexivity and calling

into question issues of gender, class, and race. A blurring of research methods

boundaries and terminology has similarly occurred across social science fields and

increasingly in applied linguistics. A notable interpretive representation of blurred

methods and genres is Anzaldua’s (1987) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

In this bilingual (Spanish/English) collection of essays and poems, Anzaldua explores

the notion of identity through her own multilingual and sociocultural experiences as

Chicana, lesbian, and activist. She challenges traditional and modernist binary,

apolitical, monolingual, and scientific representations of social inquiry through using

literary venues to define ‘‘borders’’ as an inhabited space and legitimate identity.

While applied linguists have not challenged written representations to a similar

degree, there has been a growing tendency towards contesting dominant Western or

modernist paradigms through alternative (non-Western) knowledge and genre

constructions.

An increasing number of ethnographic studies within and across multilingual

contexts began to emerge at this time, particularly in the fields of language policy and

planning, language learning, and schooling. Ethnographies began to take on a political

edge in advocating for equitable language and culture schooling. Hornberger’s (1989)

language policy and planning work with Quechua communities and McCarty’s efforts

with the Navajo people (Dick and McCarty 1992; McCarty and Schaffer 1992)

acknowledged the challenges of indigenous language maintenance and supported

bilingual education efforts. Davis (1994) argued for bottom-up language planning that

recognizes working class children’s linguistic needs through her ethnographic study of

multilingual schooling and class variation in language socialization and use in

Luxembourg. Zentella (1997) advocated for multilingual education reform through


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her ethnographic study of Puerto Rican children in New York that documented the

complex linguistic and social character of language use. Huebner and Davis (1999)

focused on LPP sociopolitical perspectives in an edited volume that explored a range

of LPP frameworks, politics, and practices in the US.

In the 1990s and early twenty first century postmodernism also began to take hold

in SLA and the larger field of applied linguistics. Postmodernism considers the

nature of knowledge as multifaceted, locally situated, and time and context bound.

This philosophical position opposes research assumptions of political neutrality and

argues instead for examination of power relations in language and literacy studies.

Poststructuralism specifically refutes the notion that language can be understood in

structuralist terms as a network of systematically linked propositions and coherent

organized units. Subsequently, New Literacies Studies scholars (e.g., Gee

2000) advanced research based on the premise that, rather than a set of static,

decontextualized, and discrete skills, literacy is always dynamic, multifaceted,

power laden, and situated in local practices. Applied linguists and socially situated

SLA researchers have increasingly focused on language and cultural diversity in

investigating multiple communication channels, hybrid textual forms, new local and

global social relations, and power relations from ever-evolving, changing, locally

and politically situated perspectives (e.g., Duff 2004; Kanno 2003; Lam 2000; Lin

et al. 2002; Norton 2000; Rampton 1995; Warschauer 1999).

Researchers and theorists currently utilize a range of approaches to researching and

theorizing social and political meanings that can inform local policies and practices.

Critical scholars such as Alistair Pennycook, Robert Phillipson, and Tove Skutnabb-

Kangas have long offered textual and social analyses that further understanding of the

political and social meanings of actions such as those associated with English

imperialism and globalization. More recently, LPP specialists such as Shohamy

(2006) have argued for uncovering LP ‘‘hidden agendas’’ that can ‘‘…create language

hierarchies, marginalize and exclude groups, and thus lead to the violation of personal

rights and undemocratic practices’’ (p. xvii). Yet Shohamy further suggests the

potential of a ‘‘dynamic process of multiple discourses for negotiations and battling

existing language policies’’ (p. xvii). She argues that such views ‘‘…could lead to the

creation of inclusive policies, which are open and dynamic, and where policy and

practice closely interact and contribute to a democracy of inclusion, the protection of

personal rights, along with strategies of language awareness and activism’’ (p. xvii).

Lin and Martin (2005) specifically argue for an epistemological shift from critical

deconstruction to a critical construction paradigm that addresses decolonization,

globalisation and language-in-education policy and practices. From a related but

different viewpoint, language scholars, such as Alim (2011), Pennycook (2010), and

(Alim et al. 2009) have taken sociopolitical perspectives into post-modern realms

through qualitative descriptions of global to local performative acts in which

languages, cultures, and styles, such as hip-hop, are appropriated, integrated, and

transformed by youth. More direct transformative actions are found among the

growing number of language, literacy, and education specialists (e.g., Luke 2002;

Duncan-Andrade and Morrell 2008; and Alim 2011) who call for critical and

participatory research approaches to addressing inequitable educational outcomes.

Participatory Action Research (PAR) has evolved as a collaborative effort among

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members of social communities and researchers to bring about democratic and

emancipatory investigations of processes and outcomes. PAR works toward placing

local participants at the center of investigations while striving to awaken a sense of

injustice among those with material and cultural power. Scholar educators such as

Ernest Morrell, Michelle Fine, and Julio Cammarota engage in and describe PAR work

with youth in publications such as the edited volume Revolutionizing Education:

Youth PAR in Motion (Cammarota and Fine 2008). Luke (2002) argues that the right to

research for gaining strategic knowledge necessarily involves emancipatory dis-

courses defined by Freire and colleagues as ‘‘forms of talk, writing, and representation

that are counter-ideological and act to articulate and configure collective interests in

transformative ways’’ (Luke 2002, p. 105). Luke specifically calls for critical

discourse analysis that provides a positive thesis of productive discourses of power. He

suggests that ‘‘we would need to begin to capture an affirmative character of culture

where discourse is used aesthetically, productively, and for emancipatory purposes

(Luke 2002, p 106)’’. Davis (2009) describes agentive discursive practices among

youth in Hawai‘i that involved investigating multifaceted heritage language and

cultural identities while interrogating, challenging, and appropriating academic

English practices. Canagarajah’s (2005) reflections on future directions for research

on multiliteracies emphasizes the need for transnational ethnographic studies of

students developing rhetorical negotiation strategies that modify, resist, or reorient to

expectations for written academic discourse.

The postmodern social science era has seen exponential growth in the number and

range of interpretive ethnographic and qualitative studies in applied linguistics, in

general, and LPP more specifically. Historical boundaries between qualitative

research approaches blurred and notions such as culture, context, and identity are now

commonly understood as interpretive, ever-evolving, changing, and locally and

politically situated. Yet early twenty first century neoliberal ideologies operating in

the US and other nations also indicate movement in neoclassical/autonomous and

post-positivist directions in embracing monolingualism or English language spread

and standardized curriculum/assessment in public schools and associated research

funding (Luke 2011). While this movement provides support to post-positivist SLA

scholars, many applied linguistics activists such as Terrence Wiley continue to argue

for grounding research, evaluation, and theory in multilingualism, multiculturalism,

and local control of education. There has subsequently been a growing social justice

movement across disciplines and geographic locations that argues for attending to

issues of class, race, gender, and ethnicity as these are associated with language and

power (Denzin and Lincoln 2005; Mallett et al. 2010, colloquium on linking academic

and advocacy interests among AAAL members). While researchers argue for social

justice based research within the academy, indigenous and non-Western scholars have

engaged in a full scale attack on Western epistemologies and research methodologies

(Smith 2005, 2012). Indigenous researchers, such as Smith, advocate for decolonizing

the academy’s scientific practices as they move towards local control of socially

situated inquiry.

As part of backlash activism from the standpoint of public spheres, socially and

politically engaged research and practice are increasingly embraced by postmodern


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scholar-advocates. In his 2013s edition of Language Policies in Education: Critical

Issues, Tollefson argues that:

This new (public spheres) 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 multiple 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). (p. 27)

This re-conceptualization of LPP portrays a clear epistemological and analytical

shift towards local engagement of subaltern counterpublic discourses that challenge

the dominant public sphere. The shift further signals the necessity for clearer means

in which to chart a situation-specific course towards more equitable LPP that

acknowledges local conditions, considers global ideological influence, and works

toward locally appropriate responses to language, education, and human welfare

needs. The next section of this introduction draws from past and current LPP-related

theories and research to inform conceptualization of engaged LPP practices.


Although many of the sociopolitical positions and research studies described here are

not framed as LPP, the early work of scholars such as Labov, Fishman, Skutnabb-

Kangas, and Phillipson along with a wide cross-section of other published studies can

be considered de facto representations of critical language policy making and

practices. Yet neoclassical/autonomous and neoliberal forces are always present and

can overwhelm and override historical/ideological LPP models such as those that have

more recently conspired to promote English language commodification and spread,

often along with educational standardization, to the detriment of linguistic minorities

(Luke 2011). Studies and advocacy along the lines suggested here illustrate the urgent

need for scholars and those ‘‘on-the-ground’’ to engage in macro analyses of how

global forces, such as neoliberalism, can and do impact human welfare. Correspond-

ing to macro ideological analyses is meso level analyses that signify competing

epistemologies and ontologies performed in and out of school. While Hymes’

ethnography of communication led to theories of the educational effects of home/

school social interaction and literacies differences, his ethnographic monitoring

approach (1981) suggests meso level sharing of knowledge and engaged co-

construction of meaningful instruction among all concerned, including teachers,

students, parents, community members, administrators and researchers. Menken and

Garcıa (2010) suggest that educators act as policymakers as they negotiate, resist, and

adapt language policies in schools. Also relevant is Geertz’s blurring of boundaries

between the social sciences and humanities that allows for the embedding of complex

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local and individual meanings in educational practices, as portrayed by Anzaldua. In

prior examples of emerging postmodern literature, theories of being and belonging as

multifaceted, locally situated, and time and context bound further allows for complex

identity formation and performance (engaging in multiple identity constructions

without forfeiting one’s own linguistic and cultural heritage) and socio-political

awareness (developing appreciation of community social norms at the micro/local

level while developing macro and meso awareness of the power relations affecting

education and human welfare). Gegeo and Watson-Gegeo (2013) have written

extensively about critical villagers in the Solomon Islands who have gained such

awareness through critical exploration of macro and meso power relations and the

means to draw on local (micro level) resources to combat marginalizing ideologies.

Engaged language policy/practice (ELP) generally intends to promote agency at

the intersection of macro, meso, and micro levels of conceptualizing and enacting

policy-making. ELP is critical in that it embraces Freire’s pedagogy of the

oppressed intent to raise consciousness among the marginalized and, this thematic

issue argues, all social actors involved in formulating or affected by policies. As

defined by Madison (2012) ‘‘critical ethnography is always a meeting of multiple

sides in an encounter with and among others, one in which there is negotiation and

dialogue toward substantial and viable meanings that make a difference’’ (p. 10).

While taking on this critical approach, ELP further assumes that the researcher/

facilitator grounds dialogue in analyses of how macro level ideologies and imposed

policies/practices may be detrimental to individuals and communities. In promoting

awareness, an engaged approach suggests that the researcher/facilitator takes

seriously her/his position as learner in the act of dialogue with others. In other

words, it is intended that the act of dialogue is transformative for all concerned

towards collective understanding of the challenges and possibilities for reform

leading to greater equity, social justice, and human welfare. ELP also implies

moving away from simply reporting findings towards portraying dialogic processes

and outcomes that are always in a state of evolving and shifting meanings through

growing awareness and changing local, national, and global conditions.

The practice of ELP, first and foremost, means focusing on the centrality of engaging

in critical dialogue as a life-changing process. Freire (1970, 1978) suggests three forms

of consciousness—magical, naıve, and critical. Magical consciousness is a belief in fate

and, thus, the inability to change one’s circumstances. Naıve consciousness, according

to Freire, is the perception that one’s success or failure in life is related to their linguistic

and socioculturally determined upbringing. Critical consciousness is the capacity of

individuals to grasp reality as the product of human construction and, thus, to realize

agency and bring about change. Yet, rather than place the responsibility for forms of

consciousness on individuals, I would argue that institutions, such as schools, often

promote naıve consciousness through curriculum and/or tests that prohibit acquiring

and utilizing critical inquiry. Educational policies and practices thus require vigilant

engagement in policy analysis to counter disempowering schooling and promote

student agency and societal equity transformation.

While acknowledging that mass critical consciousness can be perceived as

threatening to powerful interests, there is also great potential in facilitating critical

consciousness among various groups and entities across sites and situations. David


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Gegeo and Karen Watson-Gegeo are essentially doing engaged ethnography in

working with the West Kwara’ae in the Solomon Islands since the late 1980s, focusing

on raising awareness among villagers of the value of their own knowledge and

language over that of the West. This work has supported an enduring ‘‘critical

villager’’ ideology that has led to continuing language and education transformation in

Solomon Islands, despite the challenges of war and poverty (Gegeo and Watson-

Gegeo 2013). As this and other cases (e.g., Bui this issue; Phyak this issue) show,

rather than reporting research conducted on and with particular populations, engaged

work portrays the uncovering of relevant ideologies, epistemologies, and practices at

play and the dialogic processes enacted among various actors towards bringing about

needed agency and change. Engaged language policy and practices is also about

breaking down the strait-jacket-like constraints of research paradigmatic expectations

through blurring the boundaries of science, art, interpretation, identity, language,

activism, and advocacy. It is about rigorous and committed participation in the

political and social life of varied communities of practice functioning at local,

national, and global levels. But more than participation, ELP centrally concerns

knowledgeable advocates working within and working with others in scaffolding local

control of valued linguistic and cultural resources with keen cosmopolitan awareness.

ELP is intrinsically postmodern in that it holds there are no contradictions or inherent

conflict in multiple ways of being and performing individual and communal self. It is

political in nuanced and public ways as the dispossessed work to possess the right to

research, advocate, and acquire sustainable, equitable, and self-defined honorable

ways of living. While about autonomy, ELP is also about interrupting harmful

practices on the ground through fostering awareness and challenging inhumane,

demeaning, and exclusionary social practices from within. It concerns engaging

institutions, such as universities, in critical self-reflection on what counts as language,

what counts as knowledge, and whose language and knowledge counts (Hymes 1981).

It involves fostering a climate of exploration that is intellectually freeing rather than

academically colonizing. Finally, engaged LPP is concerned with growing service to

one’s own and other institutional communities through modeling service, advocacy,

and activism.

Institutions in the US have recently begun to push for service and advocacy

scholarship. The Urban Research-Based Action Network (URBAN) involves a cross-

disciplinary network of scholars across the US committed to the use of community-

based research for ‘‘collaborative generation and testing of knowledge by scholars

and practitioners’’. The university and knowledge production based ideology that

underlies this approach includes a learning platform where scholar-activists,

students, journalists, and policy analysts learn about, share information, and

collaborate on urban field research concerned with community activism projects.

The Community Organizing and School Reform Project at Harvard University is

actively involved in researching and reporting on community-based organizing that

acts as catalysts for school reform. More specifically, the project seeks out and

documents case studies of parents, young people and educators who join community

organizing groups in building a new movement towards transforming public

education and working for social justice. The project has published a collection

of case study accounts of community activism called A Match on Dry Grass:

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Community Organizing and School Reform (Warren and Mapp 2011). The

multileveled Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia University

promotes a ‘‘full participation’’ diversity and public engagement framework that

focuses on enabling people across identities, backgrounds, and institutional

positions to realize their capabilities, engage in meaningful institutional life and

enable others to do the same (Sturm et al. 2011). While sustaining diversity and

social engagement within the institution, the Center further supports transformative

community-based activism and advocacy. The Institute for Urban and Minority

Education, Teachers College at Columbia University, directed by Ernest Morrell, is

a leading model of educational and language equity reform through student research

and political engagement in the US (Institute for Urban and Minority Education

2013). At the same time as higher education is moving towards facilitating and/or

supporting community activism, teachers, students, parents, and community

members are engaging in collaborative actions against inequitable school policies

such as standardized curricula and assessment that defy diversity and fuel social

reproduction (Cochran-Smith 2005; Lather 2004; Orfield et al. 2004). Furthermore,

transnational activist movements such as those promoting indigenous epistemolo-

gies and decolonizing methodologies through community-based education and

research have been steadily building momentum (see McCarty 2013; Smith 2012).

While the institutional and community-based projects described above engage a

broad spectrum of human welfare, equity, and social justice issues, the field of

language policy and planning has historically focused on language and culture. Thus,

LPP is often disassociated from social realities representing pressing human welfare

challenges such as poverty, dislocation, global warming, armed conflict, crime, and

health issues. The social issues most closely aligned with language are likely those

neoliberal actions linked with commodifying social disparity. For example, in

marketing English and Western forms of education, both profit and non-profit

organizations are essentially marketing social reproduction (Bourdieu 1984). In other

words, those who have the least access to social commodities such as geographic

(urban), higher social class, multilingual, and technological resources are least likely

to succeed in the English/Western educational market place (see Luke 2011). At the

same time, the promise if not the actuality of socioeconomic benefit from English

language learning can none-the-less pose threats to indigenous languages, home/

heritage languages and, more generally, multilingualism/multiculturalism that

provide alternative epistemologies for addressing pressing social issues (Gegeo and

Watson-Gegeo 2002). Beyond and inclusive of various forms of education are the

current threats to both biodiversity and sociodiversity encompassed in environmental

concerns and economic colonialism, imperialism, and globalization. For example,

Joan Martinez-Alier conceptualizes an ‘‘environmentalism of the poor,’’ (e.g.,

countering imposed genetically modified grains that result in crop failure) while

Vandana Shiva provides a model of ‘‘earth democracy’’ (Earth Democracy 2013). At

the same time, global warming resulting in rising ocean levels is severely impacting

island states such as the Maldives and Pacific Islands. Varying levels of social concern,

regard for the environmental impact of global fuel emissions, and Western

neoliberalism and assimilationist intent through dislocation are experienced by

peoples across these Island States and territories.


123

In addition to environmental threats, global capitalism driven by neoliberal policies

and practices of transnational corporations has contributed to poverty through loss of

union protection and recession created by market collapse in many ‘‘developed’’

countries while exploiting cheap labor in ‘‘developing’’ nations through corporate out-

sourcing and other means. Whereas garment workers in the US organized to protect the

rights of an increasing number of undocumented workers, oppose anti-immigrant

ballot propositions and legislation, and support the National Coalition for Haitian

Refugees, nearly half the total number of workers lost their jobs in the 1980s and 1990s

to outsourcing. An increasing number of reports suggest that the transfer of

manufacturing to poor countries has subsequently resulted in unsafe working

conditions and/or exploitation of workers (PBS 2013). Given global conditions

experienced in local situations are at the center of concern for sustainable life, they also

pose crucial questions concerning the role of languages, literacies, discourses,

technologies, and other modes of communication that are integral to realizing equity

and social justice that includes issues of survival, well-being, and peace. An ELP case

in point is the Coelho and Henze article (this issue) that suggests the limited utility that

English holds for rural mountain Nicaraguan youth, only 17 % of whom even get to

secondary school where English language study is required. The issue here seems less

about English than about misguided language, education, and resource distribution

policies. What do these children and youth need to survive in a climate of extreme

poverty and limited resources? What do education, social services, advocacy, and

activism have to offer, through various means of communication in relevant

languages/language varieties, in bringing these and other children out of poverty?

Conclusions

The rise of social and educational equity and advocacy movements that are

geographically specific and globally relevant suggest new directions in language

policy and planning/practices field towards engaged theories and methods that

inform and transform. This notion of an ‘‘engaged’’ field is not new. The Current

Anthropology 2010 supplemental issue reports the long history and current status of

Engaged Anthropology. In an article in this issue on ‘‘Working toward a More

Engaged Anthropology’’ Ida Susser describes the field as follows:

…engagement in social transformation has a long-established history within

anthropology. Much contested, it has been unevenly represented at different

historical moments. The critique of colonialism, imperialism, and specific

governments is part of this engagement, but participation in social transforma-

tion is a further step. I would maintain that today (if not always) we are all global

citizens and that specifically as anthropologists who take the global as our

subject, we might be enjoined to theorize social transformation at both the

domestic and international levels… Participation in efforts for social transfor-

mation and analyses of both the successes and failures strikes me as one

important way that anthropologists work for social justice and simultaneously

contribute to the field of anthropological theory. (p. 244)

K. A. Davis

123

Our thematic issue on Engaged Language Policies and Practices echoes these

sentiments and makes a preliminary effort towards conceptualizing and portraying

this field. Yet, this issue is above all a product of an engaged scholarly process and,

thus, a work in progress. Like many thematic issues, ours began as a colloquium,

specifically the 2012 AAAL panel on Language Policy and Planning on the

Ground: A Multidimensional and Interactive Approach. The panel’s work was

inherently ideological, political, and dialogical in efforts towards bringing about

more equitable language policies and educational practices. Yet we hoped to go

beyond the usual conceptualization, documentation, and reporting of language

minority studies towards a more explicitly transformative approach. At the time, I

had been working closely with doctoral students, Prem Phyak and Thuy Bui

(authors, this issue), on envisioning dialogical research approaches that acknowl-

edge the potentially harmful impact of global ideologies while building awareness

of alternative local equitable policies and practices. Prem Phyak arrived in our

doctoral program already having begun engaging in consciousness-raising dialogue

with educational administrators, politicians, teachers, youth, villagers and social

media in his native Nepal towards support for indigenous language education and

multilingual policies. As Thuy Bui analyzed data collected in her mountainous

region home in Vietnam, we began to realize how central her dialogic engagement

with minority youth and their teachers was in bringing about transformation. While

students increasingly moved from a state of language and educational oppression

towards collective indigenous and personal agency, teachers began to re-evaluate

and transform their beliefs about minority students and the corresponding efficacy

of educational language policies. In recognizing the agentive potential of all of the

thematic issue contributions in this direction, we collectively explored ELP as a

particular epistemological and methodological approach. In essence, ELP has

emerged as representing a substantive shift from seeing data as solely concrete and

reportable to understanding data as also process and portrayable. In other words,

although outcomes continue to be important to report, for the ELP researcher/

learner the process and the revealing of it takes center stage. Drawing from Freire’s

dialogic process of conscientization, while making the ideologies underlying

language policies and practices transparent and known, ELP also aims to raise

consciousness among all the various actors involved in LPP decision making while

engaging them in action aimed to counter inequitable and unjust practices. Given

that envisioning ELP was our starting point, the thematic issue is represented here as

on-the-ground work in various states of addressing conscientization, resistance, and

transformation.

In exploring language policy and practices in Nepal, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Spain,

Canada, and the US this issue generally suggests an ELP approach that is

multidisciplinary; multi-method; focused on engagement at intersecting levels; and

transformative. Phyak and Bui portray this fluidity in multi-layered comparative

depictions of ELP within their respective Nepal and Vietnam home countries. They

draw on critical ethnography as embedded in ELP to gain an understanding of

history, place, and culture in relation to globalization, neoliberalism, and

nationalism as it unfolds in their fields of concern. The authors then focus on

how indigenous/minority youth in Nepal and Vietnam gain agency through dialogic


123

processes and subsequently construct, refine and transform agency into action in

resisting exclusionary language policies. This article suggests an over-all model of

ELP involving ongoing processes of ideological analysis, critical ethnographic

research, and engaged dialogic practices towards sustainable transformation.

Schecter, Garcia-Parejo, Ambadiang, and James portray the foundation of ELP

work through exploring the pockets of critical engagement and agency among

educators working within educational bureaucracies in Ontario, Canada and Spain.

They situate their language variation research within a social critique tradition (Low

and Merry 2010) that emphasizes the discursive frameworks undergirding the

respective policy contexts (Fairclough 1995; Phillipson 1992). The authors

simultaneously argue that aspects of macro, meso, and micro structures established

for educational provision have potential for engaging ideologies and those who

enact them in dialogic processes that hold promise for progressive outcomes in the

form of instantiating language variation as an integral component of schooling

policy. The study models how grounding of future actors and activism in ideological

and situational analyses paves the way for informed engagement with local agents.

Coelho and Henze’s work with rural teachers in Nicaragua portrays ELP as

primarily taking place at the meso level while also sending ripples that move both

outward and inward, towards both the macro and micro levels. For example, by

supporting the teacher’s capacity to critically question the government’s English

education policy, the macro level is implicitly engaged; at the same time, by

collaboratively seeking ways to transform policy into meaningful, relevant

classroom practice, the micro level is also engaged. Pease-Alvarez and Thompson

(this issue) and Langman (this issue) both provide macro level analyses while

focusing on meso level actions. Pease-Alvarez and Thompson document how

agency became a collective process among teachers who meet outside school walls

to engage and resist mandated literacy policies that they find harmful to students and

offensive to them as knowledgeable professionals. The space teachers create to

testify and resist signifies a courageous and agentive act towards countering

demoralizing and dehumanizing policies. While the Langman article (this issue)

also portrays teacher challenges with educational policies, this engaged LP study

further reveals how ELL high school teachers enact agentive spaces for providing

creative and engaging school curriculum. In recognizing theories of being and

belonging as multifaceted, locally situated, and time and context bound, Langman

describes ways in which teachers engage students in content and language learning

through recognizing and building on their everyday performance of identities to

initiate their own forms of translanguaging and transculturing. Langman further

introduces the concepts of language awareness, linguistic diversity, translanguaging,

and transcultural flows to teachers towards further fostering ways in which to build

on their ‘‘idiosyncratic’’ practices in conscious ways.

This thematic issue is, in essence, a portrayal of the process that emerged through

engaging with the critical literature, external reviews, and each other towards

arriving at this particular point of ‘‘work in progress’’. A dialogic intertextual

approach served to foster an ‘‘in process’’ description of the epistemological,

theoretical, and methodological premises of ELP. The articles further represent

movement from gaining knowledge about inequitable situations and/or exemplary

K. A. Davis

123

equitable practices towards ELP that portrays the processes of mutual engagement

among researcher/learners and all relevant actors. We feel that, as language and

social equity advocates, further ELP theoretical conceptualization and social

practices portrayal are important in realizing our collective commitment to and

progress towards social justice.

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Author Biography

Kathryn A. Davis is Professor of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her

fields of interest include language ideologies, policies and practices; bilingualism/multilingualism in

society and schooling; and identity, agency, and advocacy. She has published on critical ethnography;

agentive youth research; gender and language education; indigenous language maintenance and loss;

social class and language education in multilingual contexts; and sociopolitical/engaged approaches to

language policy-making and planning.

K. A. Davis

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Documents

Engaged language policy and practices