Maarja Siiner - Böcker

In the sociopolitics of language, sometimes yesterday’s solution is tomorrow’s problem.  This volume examines the evolving nature of language acquisition planning through a collection of papers that consider how decisions about language learning and teaching are mediated by a confluence of psychological, ideological, and historical forces.  The first two parts of the volume feature empirical studies of formal and informal education across the lifespan and around the globe.  Case studies map the agents, resources, and attitudes needed for creating moments and spaces for language learning that may, at times, collide with wider beliefs and policies that privilege some languages over others.  The third part of the volume is devoted to conceptual contributions that take up theoretical issues related to epistemological and conceptual challenges for language acquisition planning.  These contributions reflect on the full spectrum of social and cognitive factors that intersect with the planning of language teaching and learning including ethnic and racial power relations, historically situated political systems, language ideologies, community language socialization, relationships among stakeholders in communities and schools, interpersonal interaction, and intrapersonal development.  In all, the volume demonstrates the multifaceted and socially situated nature of language acquisition planning.

Language Policy beyond the State invites readers to (re-)consider the ways language policy is constituted, taken up, and researched if we look within and past the state. Contributors to this edited volume draw attention to language policy as always in the making, focusing on agency, on-the-ground practices, and ideologies. The chapters of the book reveal how simultaneous, and at times contradicting, language policies exist within a state and explore the complex roles played by families, businesses, educational institutions, and media in generating and appropriating these policies. By moving away from language policy analysis concerned primarily with how official state policies address well-defined language problems, some of the contributions of the volume highlight how the problems themselves can be ideological artifacts or are discursively constructed in language ideological debates that are provoked by changes in the geopolitical situation in the region.  Using qualitative and descriptive research, the book uses Estonia as a setting to examine the ways historic and contemporary populations navigate language policies in both local and transnational spaces. As a whole, the collection speaks eloquently and powerfully to current efforts to understand and map the ways multiple institutions and individuals—not just the state—play an active role in forming and taking up language policies.

In the sociopolitics of language, sometimes yesterday’s solution is tomorrow’s problem.  This volume examines the evolving nature of language acquisition planning through a collection of papers that consider how decisions about language learning and teaching are mediated by a confluence of psychological, ideological, and historical forces.  The first two parts of the volume feature empirical studies of formal and informal education across the lifespan and around the globe.  Case studies map the agents, resources, and attitudes needed for creating moments and spaces for language learning that may, at times, collide with wider beliefs and policies that privilege some languages over others.  The third part of the volume is devoted to conceptual contributions that take up theoretical issues related to epistemological and conceptual challenges for language acquisition planning.  These contributions reflect on the full spectrum of social and cognitive factors that intersect with the planning of language teaching and learning including ethnic and racial power relations, historically situated political systems, language ideologies, community language socialization, relationships among stakeholders in communities and schools, interpersonal interaction, and intrapersonal development.  In all, the volume demonstrates the multifaceted and socially situated nature of language acquisition planning.