Editorial

A central concern of language policy is the forms of intervention that may be carried out by governments or other agencies in order to shape the learning or use of particular languages. The issues of national language management are the principal focus of the scholarly studies in this issue of the journal.

In the first article, Stefaan van der Jeught examines French language policy, focusing on the “Toubon law”, which was passed more than 20 years ago. This law contains far-reaching linguistic obligations, mandating the use of French not only in the public spheres, but also in domains governed by private law. He offers a legal assessment of the law, in particular addressing the issue of its relationship to EU law. He concludes that, generally speaking, the Toubon law is compatible with EU law, as it does not impose the exclusive use of French, but allows for the use of other languages as well.

In the second article, Edward Y.W. Chu evaluates the exceptionally forceful “mother-tongue” education policy brought into force in Hong Kong in 1998–2010. This required that, for most students, instruction, print materials and assessments should be in the students’ first language, Chinese. He argued that this failed to raise standards in second language learning, and resulted in fewer students from less privileged backgrounds gaining access to university. He suggests that the problems arose from the model of bifurcation medium of instruction, the ineffective exposure of students to the second language and a lack of monitoring of the policy in its initial stages.

Guadalupe Francia and Ulla Riis analyse the implementation of EU policies for foreign language proficiency in Sweden, particularly focusing on Spanish as an optional school subject at school. They note that Spanish is popular among pupils, but nonetheless pupil achievement is poor and dropout rates are high. They point to the lack of qualified teachers of Spanish and shortcomings in teacher education, particularly the low priority given to in-service training by local educational authorities. They conclude that there is a mismatch between state responsibility for teacher education on one side and local needs of teacher supply and responsibility for in-service training on the other.

Rebecca Van Herck and Dieter Vermandere examine the arrangement in Belgium by which some public servants are entitled to a language bonus when they need to use two official languages, mainly Dutch and French, in their jobs. Some of the employees (window clerks) of a state-owned, public service company receive this bonus, but only those who work in Brussels, because it is an official bilingual area (French/Dutch). The authors found that the language bonus is a source of dissatisfaction for clerks working in monolingual regions, such as Antwerp, because they also need to be multilingual to perform their jobs, but do not receive the bonus. They suggest that this language management strategy should be evaluated regularly to become fully effective.

In the final article, Perizat Yelubayeva, Assel Chaklikova and Nelli Asmatullayeva discuss ways of bringing Critical Discourse Analysis frameworks into the educational environment and into English teaching classes in particular. They present a teaching model, developed in Kazakhstan, for developing undergraduate students’ critical thinking and discourse analysis skills. On the basis of their study, they argue that their design led to developing students’ ability to distinguish the social and political aspects of a topic by focusing their attention on specific kinds of textual, discursive and contextual features. It alerted students to the existence of power in relationships and helped them to develop from passive communicators to active and collaborative communicators.

The Interventions section is a platform for policy statements, reports and other published documents relating to language policy. The first two documents presented in this issue outline some reflections on the relationship between language and knowledge. Key extracts are included from the recent Council of Europe study, Les dimensions linguistiques de toutes les matières scolaires. Un Guide pour l’élaboration des curriculums et pour la formation des enseignants. Key sections are then included from a report by the European Centre for Modern Languages on a pluriliteracies approach to teaching for learning.

Three documents address the value...