Engaging Language Policy and Practices

Engaged Language Policy and Practices re-envisions language policy and planning as an engaged approach, drawing on and portraying theoretical and educational equity perspectives. It calls for the right to language policy-making in which all concerned―communities, parents, students, educators, and advocates―collectively imagine new strategies for resisting global neoliberal marginalization of home languages and cultural identities. This book subsequently emphasizes the means by which engaged dialectic processes can inform and clarify language policy-making decisions that promote equity. In other words, rather than descriptions of outcomes, the authors emphasize the need to detail the means by which local/regional actors resist and transform inequitable policies. These descriptions of processes thereby provide all actors with ideological, pedagogical, and equity policy tools that can inform situated school and community policy-making.

This book depicts ways in which engaged language policy embodies the intersection of critical inquiry, participant involvement, and ongoing engaged language planning processes. It further offers an alternative to the traditional top-down approach to language education policy-making. Engaged Language Policy and Practices is essential reading for scholars, teachers, students, communities, and others concerned with worldwide language and identity equity.

Kathryn A. Davis is Professor of Language Policies and Practices at the University of Hawai’i, USA. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education.

Prem Phyak is Lecturer at the Department of English Education at Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal.