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Language policy and education in Britain

This chapter was requested as an update of the 1st Edition published in 1998. The 10 volume award-winning encyclopedia represents a full revision and update of the field. The volume focuses on the political dimensions of language policy. The chapter is inter-disciplinary in perspective incorporating economics, politics, sociology of language, and language policy planning. Using a deconstructionist, critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodological approach, the chapter engages with the specific historical processes that have led to the hierarchizing of majority and minority languages and their speakers. The uniqueness of the chapter lies in the fact that in addition to language issues related to migrant and immigrant groups it extends the discourse on language and politics to the largely over-looked autochthonous languages of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, changes taking place within the European Union as well as the complex linguistic demands of the global economy. The main thesis of the chapter is that cultural and linguistic landscapes are not static; they evolve as societies undergo political, economic and demographic changes. Emphasizing the primacy of linguistic capital (Bourdieu) it explains the central role of language as both vehicle and mediator of contemporary social change and the central role that educational processes play in building effective human capital in a continuously changing world. It argues for the need of continued and deepening language in education research into limits and possibilities associated with contemporary change global processes.