Insecurities in Language Policy and Planning: Decolonial Theories and Practices

Invites readers to question whether language planning and policy can survive decolonialization.

This book represents a vital step forward in the process of decolonizing language policy and planning (LPP). It addresses both theoretical and practical aspects of LPP, while exploring its intersection with domains including security, politics and education. A decolonized LPP invites us to view language as an interconnected phenomenon, with boundaries that are not defined by structural, territorial, ethnic or historical limitations.

The chapters in this book problematize the positivist, instrumental, pragmatic and technical dimensions of LPP, while offering a renewed perspective in dialogue with contemporary struggles and claims. It covers a range of geopolitical contexts, with particular attention to the dialogues and contradictions between the North and the South.

Sinfree Makoni is Director of African Studies, Liberal Arts Professor of African Studies and Applied Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Cristine Severo is an Associate Professor at Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and a CNPq national Fellow. 

Ashraf Kamal Abdelhay is an Associate Professor in the programme of Linguistics and Arabic Lexicography at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (Qatar). He holds a PhD in the field of sociolinguistics from the University of Edinburgh. He was an ESRC Research Associate in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, and a Research Fellow of Clare Hall College, both at the University of Cambridge, UK. His current research interest is on southern language ontologies and decolonial discourses of language policy. He co-edited: African Literacies: Ideologies, Scripts, Education (with Kasper Juffermans and Yonas Asfaha, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014); Language Planning and Policy: Ideologies, Ethnicities and Semiotic Spaces of Power (with Cristine Severo and Sinfree Makoni, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020); The Languaging of Higher Education in the Global South: Decolonizing the Language of Scholarship and Pedagogy (With Makoni, Severo, and Anna Kaiper-Marquez, Routledge, 2022); Shads of Decolonial Voices in Linguistics (With Makoni, Severo, Kaiper-Marquez, and Višnja Milojičić, Multilingual Matters, 2023); Sociolinguistics of Protesting (Two Volumes, with Makoni and Severo, De Gruyter, 2025); Insecurities in Language Policy and Planning: Decolonial Theories and Practices (with Makoni, Severo, and Alissa J. Hartig, Multilingual Matters, 2026). He serves in the editorial boards of some journals in the field including the International Journal of the Sociology of Language; Language Policy; and Applied Linguistics. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Language and Linguistics at Cambridge Publishing Scholars.

Alissa J. Hartig is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Portland State University, USA. Her research interests include English for Specific Purposes and second language writing.