Nathan John Albury

This introductory piece outlines the lens adopted in this special issue, which foregrounds the examination of language and semiotics as a means of revisiting the concept of diaspora. Guided by posthumanist applied linguistics, the papers here envision human experiences as more complex than critical social theory may suggest; moreover, grassroots agency – a focus that may be inadvertently overlooked in work that adopts a solely critical perspective – represents an important area of attention. Such an approach is grounded in the diversity of human realities that emerge from differential interfaces between structures and individuals who, themselves, possess the capacity to recognize these structures and respond to them in unique ways. Together, the diverse pictures of inventive, creative, and, in some cases, dynamic constructions of diasporic identity presented here supplement, broaden, and challenge common …

This interdisciplinary paper shows that investigating community language beliefs, as a pillar of language policy research, can be enriched by the principles of theory of mind. The case study is Malaysia where ethnonationalist law and policy elevates the language and culture of the Muslim Malay majority above those of citizens of Chinese and Indian ethnicity, but where a seismic political shift is underway. The re-election of Dr Mahathir Mohammad as prime minister in May 2018, but now standing for Pakatan Harapan, broke decades of rule by the traditionalist United Malays National Organisation. Promises are being made to bring an end to Malaysia's race-based politics and foster equality. The situation is ripe for producing contentious and politically-embedded talk in the community about Malaysia's linguistic diversity and ethnonationalist language policy. In that context, this paper analyses how youths from different ethnic groups feel about Malaysia's societal multilingualism. However, the innovation is in then soliciting and analysing the hypotheses of these same youths about how their own heritage languages, as well as societal multilingualism and language policy, are perceived by the other ethnic groups. As Malaysia embarks on political change, exploring beliefs in these interethnic multidirectional terms reveals fissures and alignments between beliefs that are articulated by different youths and the beliefs that are attributed to them. This methodological approach can support language policy processes and research by more richly investigating language beliefs and ideological positioning from multidirectional vantage points.

This paper revisits the tension in sociolinguistics between the
linguistic capital associated with languages of socioeconomic
mobility, and the cultural and identity value of local languages.
With Malaysia as a case study, the paper shows that although this
economy-versus-culture tension may be a go-to ideological
paradigm in sociolinguistics for exploring and analyzing ideologies
and beliefs vis-à-vis- language acquisition and language policy, it
may not necessarily feature as saliently in grassroots perspectives.
A series of group interviews was held with Malaysian youths who
have experienced their government’s policy backflips on whether
mathematics and science are taught in English (or in Bahasa
Malaysia or in another medium-of-instruction) in primary and
secondary schools. By asking these youths to reflect on their
experiences, policy, and what language they would prefer for
mathematics and science, the research reveals perspectives that
more often fell outside the critical economy-versus-culture
ideological continuum. Instead, the youths were sooner
concerned with monolingual education facilitating expedited
learning, with cognitive ease, and with fostering a consistent policy approach. The findings caution against assuming that
economy-versus-culture is a key interest in the community
regarding language policy, and encourage us to apply alternate,
non-critical theoretical lenses to understand a broader range of
bottom-up concerns.

This paper shows, with Malaysia as a case study, that an ethnonationalist language policy need not have disempowering consequences for minorities. Malaysia politicises ethnic difference between Malaysians of Malay, Chinese and Indian descent. Ethnic Malays enjoy economic concessions unavailable to others, law defines Malaysia as Islamic and speaking Bahasa, and Malay ethnonationalism constructs Chinese and Indian-Malaysians as perpetual visitors. Nonetheless, Bahasa has only added to the multilingual repertoires of non-Malays, rather than replaced it. This paper analyses survey data about the multilingual practices of Malaysian youth and their folk linguistic talk about what guides their multilingualism. By drawing on critical language policy, it appears that policy may be so ethnonationalist that it has caused disassociation, especially amongst Indian-Malaysians, and sustained multilingualism. The Chinese-Malaysian experience, however, is better explained by a posthumanist perspective whereby language choices appear guided by material and immaterial resources within the Chinese-Malaysian community, rather than by matters of power or politics. In any case, the relative greater multilingualism of Chinese-and Indian-Malaysians was perceived as empowering non-Malay mobility despite ethnonationalist policy.

This paper analyses divergence between national language policy on the one hand, and perceptions of it on the other. In ethnocratic Malaysia, language policy codifies the supremacy of Bahasa Malaysia as part of a broader ethnonationalist policy agenda that pedestalises the ethnic Malays and curtails the rights of Chinese and Indian-Malaysians. A series of 25 folk linguistic group discussions was held with Malay, Chinese, and Indian youth who defined and constructed Malaysia’s national language policy in their own epistemic terms. In a political culture that suppresses public debate about ethnic affairs, their constructions were sooner informed by personal experiences, observations, assumptions, and ideologies mistaken for policy, rather than the content and rationale of language policy established by the state. Malay and Chinese youth appeared the least critically aware of language policy, for ethnonationalist and socioeconomic reasons, respectively, whereas Indian youth attributed policy to Malay hegemony. The findings have broader relevance for language policy researchers. In the face of gaps between policy and perception, analysing whether and how governments communicate language policies with the public – especially in societies where democracy and transparency are not assured – will improve our analyses of language policy as a dynamic societal process.

Localising knowledge and dispositions helps to predict the likely success of top-down language policies. In so far as language acquisition is a pillar of language revitalisation policy, then community perspectives on learning a minority language deserve attention. This paper presents the knowledge, dispositions, and ideas of around 1,300 indigenous and non-indigenous university students in New Zealand about learning te reo Māori as public policy. The paper analyses the students' level of agreement to a series of propositions about language acquisition policy, and the epistemic and dispositional stances they took in their free-text commentary to describe the rationale for learning te reo Māori, how and where acquisition occurs, who should learn the language and to what extent, what policy should deliver, and what policy changes are needed. The paper concludes that the knowledge and dispositions of the students are at odds with government policy and traditional tenets of language revitalisation theory.

Linguistic landscapes have proven to be intriguing foci of sociolinguistic
research in and of themselves, given language in public spaces indexes
broader sociolinguistic processes, struggles, and policies. This paper,
however, trials linguistic landscape as a methodological tool for research
that solicits and analyses metalinguistic talk – encased by its
sociocognitive dimensions – about societal multilingualism. Multilingual
but ethnocratic Malaysia serves as the case study where linguistic
diversity persists despite laws and ideologies that pedestalise the
language and culture of the ethnic Malays above the local Chinese and
Indian minorities. Language is largely synonymous with ethnicity in
Malaysia whereby linguistic diversity is contentiously embedded within
histories and discourses of race-relations, nation-building, and religion.
For this paper, groups of Chinese-Malaysian youths were tasked to
reflect on and discuss examples of Malaysia’s multilingual linguistic
landscape. Their metalinguistic awareness about the linguistic landscape
manifested in rich metalinguistic talk about Malaysia’s linguistic and
ethnic diversity beyond the linguistic landscape itself. The paper
typologises the discussions that transpired about and beyond the
linguistic landscape, analyses recurrent Chinese-Malaysian ideological
discourses that arose within the metalinguistic talk, and ultimately
shows that the linguistic landscape is a fertile tool for research into
grassroots sociocognitive engagement with multilingualism.

This paper argues that folk linguistic research methods have much to offer critical sociolinguists concerned with linguistic inequalities and power structures. In as much as critical theory considers knowledge as inherently woven into power relations, the folk linguistics research tradition shows that knowledge about language and the sociolinguistic world is not only the domain of academics but also resides, and is actioned, in the community. This paper specifically explores the contribution folk linguistic research methods can make to critical sociolinguistics. The paper argues that folk linguistic methods are not only well-placed to identify and trace community-based claims of knowledge that create and sustain inequalities between languages and speakers, but also allow us to localise sociolinguistic knowledge by understanding local phenomena through local world-views. Ultimately, this helps to decolonise sociolinguistics by voicing, legitimising and indeed applying more ontologies and epistemologies of language than those from the West that generally still dominate sociolinguistic scholarship.

Malaysia's international image boasts harmonious multiculturalism amongst Malay, Chinese, Indian and Indigenous ethnolinguistic groups, alluring tourists and investors worldwide. Campaigns such as Malaysia, Truly Asia promise a rich and diverse cultural experience, and the government's international investment arm describes Malaysians as Western-leaning. On the other hand, Malaysian laws, policies and subsequent scholarship show that Malaysian society is hierarchised by ethnicity and language. Through a lens of critical multiculturalism, this paper reflects on a mismatch between Malaysia's international image and domestic policy. We argue that Malaysia's international image has likely never been accurate and instead caters towards Western values. Rather than all ethnicities being equal, Malaysia is an ethnocratic state that has codified the supremacy of being Malay. We suggest that the gap between this international image and domestic multicultural experience may only be widening with a resurgence of Islamisation in Malaysian politics and society.

This article brings the critical turn in linguistics—with its current scepticism towards essentialised languages and bias for languaging—under critical evaluation. It does so by bringing it face-to-face with the local-knowledge turn in sociolinguistics that investigates local knowledge and local epistemologies, held by language users themselves, to understand sociolinguistic phenomena. This article analyses whether and how the epistemologies inherent to language, mother tongue, and languaging hold relevance in local metalinguistic talk in Malaysia. Focus group discussions with ethnic Malay, Chinese, and Indian youth reveal that languaging through Bahasa Rojak is already firmly embedded in local epistemologies for communicating across ethnolinguistic divides and fostering interethnic inclusiveness. An essentialised view of language, however, remains vital to any holistic sociolinguistic research in Malaysia in culturally specific ways that do not conflict with languaging. The article therefore supports arguments that we ought not to disregard mother tongues in the interests of critical linguistics

Naming places is theorised as an activity in heritage whereby a name will index a people’s narrative and history. In postcolonial societies where the colonised and the colonisers share spaces, individual locations can host different sides of history and different cultural significance. To this end, the New Zealand government has pursued bilingual place-naming policy to reflect the heritage of both Māori as the Indigenous people, and Pākehā as the European colonisers. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from an attitudinal survey of New Zealand youth about bilingual place-naming as public policy, this paper places under critical review the theoretical and policy assumption that representing heritage is a core public interest vis-à-vis place names. The paper finds that only a minority of the surveyed youth were concerned about indexing heritage, with the majority instead arguing for and against bilingual place-naming on the basis of Aotearoa New Zealand’s contemporary bicultural identity, perceived linguistic challenges and opportunities associated with bilingualism, and a concern for enforcing Indigenous rights legislation. The paper typologises how these youth argued for and against bilingual place-naming with attention to a diversity of evaluative and epistemological starting points when thinking about place names.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development on 16 January 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2016.1275654.

Norway's policy on its indigenous Sámi minority is oftentimes heralded as best practice in fostering self-determination and home language maintenance. Norway's policy rhetoric indeed promises that all Sámi have a right to develop their home language, and that all Norwegian children will become familiar with Sámi languages and culture. However, this paper takes a more critical perspective of Norway's policy. It argues that rhetoric has not been operationalised to benefit all Sámi nor promote Norwegian familiarity with the languages. Instead, the state appears to juggle its legislative obligations to promote the Sámi languages with an ongoing ideology in the community that the Sámi languages cannot be seen as contributing to the contemporary Norwegian nation. To make this argument, the paper firstly reviews the state's Sámi language policy to discuss fractures between rhetoric and policy. It then reports the findings of a case study whereby public online debates over the past five years about the Sámi languages in a national context were critically analysed. The case study indeed reveals a vigorous preference to hold the Sámi languages at arm's length, for reasons such as that the languages endanger Norwegian identity, that the Sámi do not deserve an indigenous status, that the Sámi are foreign to Norway and, conversely, that the Sámi do not fulfill their responsibilities as Norwegian citizens. The paper concludes that a potent Norwegian ideology against the Sámi languages may explain the state's reluctance to implement its high-level policy promises.

The postmodern and critical movements in language policy, with their redefinition of governmentality and attention to power structures, call for localised perspectives on language arrangements. In this way, a polity, in its social and cultural context, can be understood as much as the policies it operates. In the case of Indigenous languages undergoing revitalisation, this allows us to define language revitalisation, and the vitality it should deliver, not through western scholarship but for local purposes with local ideas by examining local knowledge and preferences. To do this, a folk linguistic approach was applied to language policy research. A quantitative and qualitative survey investigated how around 1,300 Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth in New Zealand define Māori language revitalisation from their own perspective and how they perceive the revitalisation processes and outcomes proposed in scholarship and local discourses. The paper shows that claimed linguistic knowledge not only exists parallel to language attitudes, but informs local policy ideas. The findings indicate that these youth define language revitalisation and vitality in terms contextualised by local ontology, knowledge, ideologies and values, therefore challenging the local applicability of universal theories.

Ko tā te hunga e whai ana i ngā kaupapa o te Aohōutanga me te Āta Pakirehua, he karanga kia whai wāhi ngā whakaaro o ngā marahea ki ngā whakaritenga reo. Koinei te hua o tā rātou tohu i te pēwheatanga o te kāwanatanga mā te aronui atu ki ngā pūnaha whakawhāiti mana. Mā konei e mārama ai ngā kaupapahere e whakahaeretia ana e te rōpū pakipaki, kia rite ai ki tōna horopaki ā-ahurea, me tōna horopaki ā- hapori hoki. Nā reira e taea ai tēnei mea te whakarauora reo te whakaahua mō ngā reo taketake e whakarauorahia ana, me te taumata o te oranga e wawatahia ana, kaua ki tā te hiahia o te hunga mātauranga tauiwi, engari, ki tā te hiahia o ngā marahea, mā te āta rangahau i tō ngā marahea mōhiotanga me ō rātou pīrangi. Kia puta mai ai tēnei mōhiotanga, ka whāia tētahi tikanga ngaio wetereo ā-marahea hei tātari kaupapahere rangahau reo. I tirohia e tētahi uiuitanga ā-ine kounga, ā-ine tātai hoki, ngā whakaaro o te 1300 taitamariki taketake, taitamariki tauiwi hoki, nō Aotearoa, me tō rātou māramatanga o te mahi whakarauora reo. I tirohia hoki te āhua o tā rātou kite i ngā tukanga whakarauora reo me ngā hua e matapaetia ana e ngā kōrero a ngā tāngata mātauranga me ngā marahea hoki. E whakaatu ana tēnei pepa ka tū ngātahi te mōhiotanga ā-reo ki te taha o ngā waiaro reo, ā, ka riro taua mōhiotanga hei tūāpapa o ngā ariā mō ngā kaupapahere marahea.E tohu ana ngā kitenga e whakaahuatia ana te ariā o te kaupapa whakarauora reo me te oranga reo e ngā taitamariki ki tā ngā ariā e whakahoropakitia ana e te mātauranga tīari me te mōhiotanga me ngā ariā me ngā waiaro ki tā te marahea titiro, ā, mā reira e werohia ai te hāngaitanga o ngā ariā e mau whānui ana ki te taiao ā-rohe

This paper examines the motivations behind Malaysia's national language policy in theoretical terms to allow the Malaysian narrative to be positioned in an international context. To do this, it applies Spolsky's (2004) theory of what influences language policy making in contemporary nation-states, namely national ideology, the role of English in globalisation era, the nation's sociolinguistic situation, and an interest in linguistic minority rights. The paper argues that all factors are relevant in the Malaysian context. However, the domestic sociolinguistic situation only influences policy in so far as Malaysia's response to its ethnolinguistic minorities is limited to minimal linguistic rights in the education system. This limited acceptance of linguistic diversity continues a tradition of protecting what Malaysian law sees as the supremacy of Malay culture and language. The paper concludes with an invitation to apply this theory in the study of other nations in the region to foster a robust body of comparative data on national language policies in Southeast Asia.

Just as an expanded view of language policy now affords agency to many more actors across society than authorities and linguists alone, it also accepts that the dispositions these agents bring to language affairs influence language policy processes and outcomes. However, this paper makes the case that language policy may also be guided, to some degree, by what these societal agents of language policy claim to know as facts in linguistics, regardless of the empirical accuracy of their knowledge. Drawing on an analysis of qualitative data from folk linguistic research on Maori language revitalisation, the paper discusses instances of the policy ideas and discourses of a cohort of young New Zealanders relying on what they claimed as facts about revitalisation. By bringing a folk linguistic perspective to language policy theory, the paper argues that space should be made to accommodate the power of folk linguistic knowledge in language policy theory.

Legislative changes are afoot in New Zealand that are formalising an ideological shift in policy that decreasingly positions the Māori language a matter of interethnic national identity but increasingly as one for Māori self-determination. The Waitangi Tribunal (WAI262, Waitangi Tribunal, 2011) established that, from here on, Māori language policy should be determined in large measure by Māori ideas. This paper advances the question of what these Māori ideas are, and indeed whether these align with those of non-Māori. In particular, the paper reports findings from a large scale qualitative survey that used a folk linguistic approach to solicit what sociolinguistic situation Māori and non-Māori youth envisage language revitalisation policy should produce, and what policy priorities they propose to achieve that. It then critically assesses whether the ideas of these youth align with the Māori language policy objectives of the New Zealand state.

Indigenous language revitalization is a popular focus of critical theorists. From the perspective of sociolinguists, critical theory interrogates language policies to name and shame inequalities and propose solutions to correct injustices and emancipate the disadvantaged. From a broader perspective, language revitalization policy also resides within national and international political agendas for the restoration of indigenous self-determination, including not just language, but also indigenous cultures, governance, and philosophies in the wake of imperialist oppression of native peoples. However, in terms of indigenous language revitalization specifically, are self-determination and the objectives of critical theory one and the same? This article considers this question and suggests that the emancipatory goals of critical theory are not necessarily synonymous with self-determination. Instead, language policies that support
self-determination may conversely impede language revitalization processes by
creating onerous demands on indigenous individuals who might instead
conceptualize their own linguistic emancipation in ways self-determination
does not.

Language policies have a better chance of succeeding if they align with the persuasions of the polity, and this is only more pronounced in the case of endangered languages, such as Te Reo (the Māori language) in New Zealand. There, a comprehensive suite of laws, policies, and programmes are in place to acknowledge and reverse the linguistic consequences of British colonisation and previous laws of linguistic assimilation. However, this history and benevolent rationale are generally hidden in policy documents and only implied in public discourse. Drawing on the findings of a large-scale qualitative online survey that obtained folk linguistic knowledge and beliefs about language revitalisation in New Zealand, this paper identifies whether non-indigenous youth claim Te Reo is or is not endangered, and analyses the diachronic and synchronic sociolinguistic reasoning these youth use to arrive at their claims. In doing so, the paper also draws on collective memory theory in sociology to especially consider whether, and to what extent, the folk linguistic commentary of these non-indigenous youth sustains a collective memory of Te Reo language loss at the hands of colonial Pākeha forefathers.

Language policies are born amidst the complex interplay of social, cultural, religious and political forces. With this in mind, Bernard Spolsky theorises that the language policy of any  independent nation is driven, at its core, by four cooccurring conditions—national ideology, English in the globalisation process, a nation’s attendant sociolinguistic situation, and the internationally growing interest in the linguistic rights of minorities. He calls for this theory to be tested (Spolsky in Language policy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004). This paper accepts the invitation by firstly considering the contributions and limitations of Spolsky’s theory vis-a-vis other contemporary research approaches and then applies the theory to the case of Iceland. Iceland is a dynamic locus for this purpose, given its remarkable monodialectism, fervent linguistic purism and protectionism, and history of overwhelming homogeneity. The study finds that all Spolsky’s factors have in some way driven Icelandic language policy, except in issues of linguistic minority rights. Instead, Icelandic language policy discourse reveals a self-reflexive interest in minority rights whereby Icelandic is discursively positioned as needing protection in the global language ecology. Accordingly, the paper examines how Spolsky’s theory may be refined to account for non-rights-based approaches to national language policies.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, post-colonial governments have commonly sought to revitalize the indigenous languages their imperialist predecessors hoped to eradicate. Although the impetus to revitalize is shared, the question of excluding or including the non-indigenous majority in the revitalization process, and encouraging them to become new speakers of the language, is a matter of politics and ideology. This paper draws on neotraditionalism and biculturalism as ideological premises in language revitalization policy to compare and contrast the nature and experiences of government policy in New Zealand and Norway as two such examples. In doing so, the paper sees neotraditionalism and biculturalism as ends of an ideological continuum that can plot policy frameworks and their changes. It finds, however, that neither has resulted in greater language revitalization and that both countries, and especially New Zealand, have flirted with a shift on the ideological continuum. Nonetheless, it appears that New Zealand's biculturalist approach has normalized the indigenous language to the extent its revitalization enjoys more support from the non-indigenous polity than in neotraditionalist Norway, where Sámi languages and policy are territorialized and invisible to most Norwegians.

Even without professional linguistic training, individuals of a speech
community engage in language policy. They interpret and apply folk
knowledge and beliefs about language to give life to language policies, and even create policy to solve local language dilemmas. These individuals are, by default, folk linguists. Folk linguistics examines the many ways folk without linguistic training perform linguistics as a science, but in the case of language policy folk linguistics has been confined to investigating the sociocultural dynamics of polities. While this remains valuable, I propose positioning language policy more
holistically within the folk linguistics research agenda. This offers an
exciting paradigm to examine not only what the folk believe about
language policy matters, but also what folk knowledge exists about
language policies and how knowledge and beliefs are applied by folk
linguists to perform language policy. To explore the salience of this
repositioning, I reflect on instances where I observed folk linguists of
language policy in the civil service and consider the contributions a folk
linguistic approach may have made.

Globalization has brought the English language to all corners of the globe.  English is the pervasive language of international connectivity and penetrates borders to assume roles within other language communities.  Iceland, like its European neighbors, feels this force.  The community worries that the local prominence of English is detrimental to the health of Icelandic – their own small but ancient language.  Even worse, fears are expressed that English may take over, inspiring a flurry of imperatives to stop English in its tracks.  This paper assesses to what extent fears that Icelandic is at risk vis-à-vis English are indeed justified.  It finds these fears are overstated because domestic communication remains firmly Icelandic, English is confined to international interests, and the globalization process - coupled with ideologies that link Icelandic identity to linguistic protectionism - has strengthened Iceland’s resolve to protect its language.

SONE Konferanse, Oslo. 21-22 April 2016.
The place is Malaysia, and the languages are many. Malaysia enforces a policy of multiculturalism that retains the ethnic divisions created by the British colonists, and the 1970 New Economic Policy codified affirmative action for the Malay, who form just over half of the country’s population. The policy seeks to counterbalance the economic dominance of the Chinese and Indian minorities through concessions for Malays in tax and education policy. It constructs Malaysian national unity in Malay religious and linguistic terms (Fernando 2006), prohibits criticizing pro-Malay policy, and cements domestic interethnic tensions (Noor & Leong 2013). Ethnic belonging therefore continues to define much of Malaysian social, economic and political life (Fenton 2003), and discourse about linguistic diversity in Malaysia remains innately tied to Malaysian ethnic politics. Parallel to this, English - once the language of the oppressors - has returned to Malaysia as the language of economic development (Gill 2005), rendering the sociolinguistic situation even more complex. This paper reports on a project currently underway that uses focus groups to analyze and compare how university students from the Malay, Chinese and Indian communities construct, describe, explain and rationalize linguistic diversity and Malaysian language policy. In doing this, the project applies the folk linguistics of language policy (Albury 2014) to canvass the parameters of their epistemic and evaluative stances on language and policy in Malaysia, allowing an understanding of Malaysian ontologies and ideologies about language vis-à-vis Malaysian multiculturalism. It also uses theory of mind (Sodian & Kristen 2010) to explore how these students believe their languages are perceived by the others. This presentation traces, at a high level, the ethnic and linguistic complexity of contemporary Malaysia, gives an overview of the project underway, and presents some insights from initial focus group discussions held at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang.

Guest seminar, Te Tumu School of Maori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand
18 November 2014


Many more societal actors than linguists create, contest, and enact language policy.  Without necessarily undergoing training in sociolinguistics, the folk nonetheless do language policy: they decide whether their children will grow up bilingually; they determine the language curricula of classrooms, and indeed political advisors in parliamentary corridors have the ear of law makers.  By default, when folk linguists apply their knowledge and beliefs about language policy, they regulate diversity, promulgate ideologies, and shape the sociolinguistic milieu.

Folk linguistics, the study of linguistic knowledge and beliefs held by non-linguists, is an established tradition with interests in dialectology (Pearce, 2009; Preston, 1993, 1996, 2005), pragmatics (Niedzielski & Preston, 2009), and language acquisition (Chavez, 2009), but it has not yet extended to language policy beyond researching the attitudes and ideologies of polities.  However, Albury (2014) has proposed the folk linguistics of language policy as a tripartite paradigm to investigate what the folk know about language policy, how they feel about policy endeavours, and how knowledge and beliefs inform language policy performance.

This paper applies the folk linguistics of language policy in respect to language revitalisation as a policy project.  It reports preliminary findings from research that sought to compare what young indigenous and non-indigenous youth in contemporary New Zealand claim to know about language revitalisation as a policy process, what attitudes and beliefs these youth have towards activities and themes aimed at revitalising the Māori language, and how their knowledge and beliefs manifest into folk linguistic performance when these youth are positioned as hypothetical language policy bosses of the New Zealand government. This is part of a broader project that will also examine the folk linguistics of revitalising the Sámi languages in Norway.

Albury, N. J. (2014). Introducing the folk linguistics of language policy. International Journal of Language Studies, 8(4), 85-106.

Chavez, M. (2009). Learners’ descriptions of German pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar: A folk linguistic account. Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 42(1), 1-18.

Niedzielski, & Preston. (2009). Folk pragmatics. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and Language Use (pp. 146-155). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pearce, M. (2009). A perceptual dialect map of north east England. Journal of English Linguistics, 37(2), 162-192.

Preston, D. (1993). Folk dialectology. In D. R. Preston (Ed.), American Dialect Research (pp. 333-377). Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V.

Preston, D. (1996). Whaddayaknow?: The modes of folk linguistic awareness. Language Awareness, 5(1), 40-74.

Preston, D. (2005). What is folk linguistics? Why should you care? Lingua Posnaniensis: Czasopismo Poświecone Językoznawstwu Porównawczemu i Ogólnemu, 47, 143-162.

For progressives around the world, it has become almost a pastime to romanticise the quasi-socialist Scandinavian countries. Nations such as Norway, Finland and Sweden are – to many – not only examples of wealth and well-being but also bastions of social progress and tolerance.

Norway, in particular, consistently leads the world in quality of life and happiness, and the country is responding compassionately to the Syrian refugee crisis, unlike its many critics in Europe. But is life in Norway really so great?

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/06/08/embracing-indigenous-languages-kiwis-just-do-it-better

European New Zealanders have embraced and preserved the Māori culture and language far better than European Australians, writes Nathan John Albury.

In 2006, a Māori claim to the Waitangi Tribunal argued that the Crown was in breach of its constitutional obligations towards the Māori language in that it “has not adequately ensured the claimants can exercise tino rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga over systems of transmission of cultural knowledge including the transmission of Te Reo Māori”  (Waitangi Tribunal, 2006, p. 40).  The Tribunal found that the New Zealand state – and not Māori themselves – primarily controlling Māori language policy has been a constitutional violation.  The New Zealand parliament has accepted the Tribunal’s recommendation.  This paper takes a closer look at what is, or can be, understood by the Waitangi Tribunal’s determination that protection of the Māori language should be determined in large measure by Māori ideas.  In particular, it identifies and problematises how the New Zealand government proposes to implement the Tribunal’s recommendation by suggesting that the New Zealand government’s response relies on specific cognitive representations (Rosch, 1975).  This probelmatisation is warranted, because upon closer inspection, the Tribunal’s determination actually hosts vague wording and semantic and syntactic ambiguities (Solan, 2012), meaning the government’s proposed interpretation is not the only possible one.  The paper also draws strongly on critical language policy theory to expose matters of justice and power that advantage some Māori and disadvantages others, including hegemony, ideology, and the application of social categories (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2002; Tollefson, 2006).

Holistic investigations of language contact situations, and indeed of language contact phenomena such as lexical borrowing, code switching or language shift, require insights from across the social sciences - and especially insights into social attitudes and ideologies - if sense is to be made of the social, political, cultural and economic forces that shape language contact scenarios.  With this short paper, I propose that scholarship consider an additional social factor which may at first sight is camouflaged as attitude or ideology but in fact runs much deeper within the linguistic culture of a speech community and guides language contact outcomes: ontologies of language.  To support this, I will offer brief insights from existing literature on the linguistic ontologies attributable to the Indigenous Māori, Sámi and Hopi language communities of New Zealand, Norway and the United States respectively to raise the possibility that language ontologies – distinct from attitudes or ideologies - might expedite or slow the impacts of language contact.

The Norwegian state has offered its Sámi peoples self-determination in respect to their language:  that is to say that Sámi have been afforded the right to manage their languages as they see fit with minimal intervention from the Norwegian state.  With this short paper drafted during course work at the Linguistics Society of America Summer Institute in 2015, I would like to briefly highlight what I see as increasing failings in the Sámi language rights infrastructure and propose that the Norwegian policy on Sámi languages may in fact covertly work to hold the Sámi languages at arm’s length to instead preserve Norwegian and Norwegianness as the defining image of Norway.

Iceland is as an extraordinary language environment.  Centuries of linguistic homogeneity and relative language stability lead Icelanders today to boast that their language is, by and large, that of their ancient Norwegian ancestors.  The planning and politics of Icelandic remain intrinsically characteristic of contemporary Iceland, particularly as this small community battles the linguistic pressures inherent to globalisation.  This dissertation explores the motivations of language policy in Iceland by applying and testing the four co-existing forces that Bernard Spolsky sees as determining language policy in any independent nation, within the framework of his definition of language policy.  This means analysing whether, and how, the workings of Icelandic national ideology, the impact of English as a global language, Iceland's sociolinguistic situation, and the internationally growing interest in linguistic minority rights have determined language practices, ideology and management in Iceland.  The research finds that all forces except an interest in linguistic minority rights have in some way driven Icelandic language policy: national ideology, steeped in medieval literary culture and linguistically-inspired nationalism, has fostered linguistic purism; the force of English has created a dichotomised response that harnesses the international benefits of English proficiency while remaining sceptical of language contact; and the recent onset of societal multilingualism has ushered in political steps to affirm the primacy of Icelandic.  Unlike Spolsky’s framework, Iceland's current language policy is not sympathetic to linguistic minority rights, other than those pertaining to Icelandic Sign Language.  Instead, Iceland has constructed a right for immigrants to learn Icelandic and integrate into the Icelandic community.  The dissertation proposes that Icelandic language policy interventions, discourse and research often reveal a self-reflexive interest in linguistic minority rights, whereby Icelandic is emphasised as a relative global minority in need of protection.

Guest lecture, Languages and Linguistics Lecture Series, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - The National University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. 19 May 2016.

Guest lecture, Scholarly Academic Invited Talk, University Sultan Zainal Abidin, Kuala Terengganu, 26 May 2016.

Guest lecture, Tunku Abdul Rahman University College, Kuala Lumpur, 8 June 2016.