Insecurities in Language Policy and Planning - (Global Forum on Southern Epistemologies) (Hardcover)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

This book practices decolonization as active, historical, situated praxis. With sharp insight and critical self-awareness, it challenges language policy and planning to reckon with their colonial inheritances, offering a transformative lens rooted in what decolonization does, rather than what it merely means. As such, it is mandatory reading for critical eyes in search of non-extractivist LPP built around notions of embodied knowledge and epistemologies of the Souths.-- "Clarissa Menezes Jordão"

This volume is a veritable tour de force. It brings out the complexities and pitfalls of Language Policy and Planning, starting with the pervasive slipperiness of key concepts found lacking in operational definition. The contributors highlight the significance of bringing into the equation the often-sidelined voices from the Global South.-- "Kanavillil Rajagopalan, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil"

About the Author

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

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

Ashraf Abdelhay works for the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar, as an Associate Professor in the program of Linguistics and Arabic Lexicography.

Alissa J. Hartig is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, Portland State University, USA.