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State Language Policy in Time and Space: Meaning, Transformation, Recontextualisation

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Discursive Approaches to Language Policy

Abstract

In this chapter, I claim that the central aim of a discursive approach to language policy in the contemporary state should be to examine what spaces are available to actors engaging with a policy, and what the affordances of those spaces are with regard to their potential to shape policy and practices. I also argue that an analysis of policy needs to take time into account as a factor which governs how actors engage with policy, and what influence they are able to exert in different spaces. The chapter combines contemporary state theory with interpretive policy analysis and critical discourse analysis to propose a comprehensive theoretical framework for analysing language policy.

Drawing on my research on Slovene language policy, I also provide examples of how this framework can be applied in the analysis of a particular policy document. I focus on how changes in the broad political context impacted the genesis of a Slovene language strategy, showing that the text was subject to various agenda shifts as the landscape around it transformed. I also show how studying the discourses that surround such policies means studying engagement with a particular topic across different social spaces, and thus taking into account different practices. I conclude by examining how this elaborated view of policy can be translated into a critical stance which is sensitive to the agencies that are inherent parts of every policy and to the forces that constrain them.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I am referring to several grounding ideas of CDA here, namely the view of discourse as socially constitutive and constituted social practice, which is realised through language, through concrete instantiations, which may be in the form of talk, text, or image (Fairclough and Wodak 1997).

  2. 2.

    Resequencing refers to cases where the order of elements, and with it the informational structure of the text, is modified; addition refers to the introduction of completely new elements in the text; deletion involves the complete removal of elements from the text; substitution refers to direct one-for-one exchanges of elements in the text (Wodak 2000, p. 77).

  3. 3.

    http://mailman.ijs.si/mailman/listinfo/slovlit (Accessed 1 June 2015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Thailand

    Kristof Savski

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  1. Kristof Savski
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Elisabeth Barakos

  2. Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

    Johann W. Unger

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Savski, K. (2016). State Language Policy in Time and Space: Meaning, Transformation, Recontextualisation. In: Barakos, E., W. Unger, J. (eds) Discursive Approaches to Language Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53134-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53134-6_3

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