NDLI: National language policy theory: exploring Spolsky’s model in the case of Iceland

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Albury, Nathan John
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	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 co-occurring 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-à-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.
Starting Page	355
Ending Page	372
Page Count	18
File Format	PDF
ISSN	15684555
Journal	Language Policy
Volume Number	15
Issue Number	4
e-ISSN	15731863
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2015-03-01
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Language policy theory Spolsky Linguistic rights Relative minority Linguistic protectionism Applied Linguistics Language Education Sociolinguistics Political Science
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Sociology and Political Science Linguistics and Language

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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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