Language Policy and Planning in Universities

Teaching, research and administration

Anthony J. Liddicoat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367891473
• eBook ISBN: 9781351400930
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In a world where higher education is increasingly internationalised, questions of language use and multilingualism are central to the ways in which universities function in teaching, research and administration. Contemporary universities find themselves in complex linguistic environments that may include national level language policies, local linguistic diversity, an internationalised student body, increasing international collaboration in research, and increased demand for the use and learning of international languages, especially English.

The book presents a critical analysis of how universities are responding these complexities in different contexts around the world. The contributions show that language issues in universities are complex and often contested as universities try to negotiate the national and the international in their work. In some contexts, universities' language policies and the ways in which they are implemented may have a negative impact on their ways of working. In other contexts, however, universities have embraced multilingualism in ways that have opened up new academic possibilities for staff and students. Collectively, the chapters show that universities' language policy and planning are a work in progress and that much further work is needed for universities to achieve their language goals. This book was originally published as a special issue of Current Issues in Language Planning.

Language policy, planning, and enactment: the necessity and empowering potential at the local level

Robert M. Higgins and Alan Brady

ABSTRACT

An initiative termed “Global 30 Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalization” (hereafter G30) in Japan aims for the recruitment of an additional 300,000 international students by 2020 to study in Japan in English, and also aims to send many more Japanese university students overseas than are now studying outside Japan. There are a number of related substantive issues involving globalization, academic mobility, and the development of an active global-minded citizenry through higher education that are inextricably linked in this paper to research how key educational stakeholders at the micro (hereafter local) levels of foreign-English language policy and planning (hereafter ELPP), such as teachers, through their agency as policy-planners, enact language policy, and planning at a private university in Japan. A quasi-ethnographic approach to data sources, interviewing, historical documentation, observations, and narrative will be used to help explore the higher educational experiences and expectations of these stakeholders, and how these experiences and expectations contribute to perceptions and attitudes related to issues of curriculum planning and enactment, with particular regard to how ELPP does or does not connect to higher education internationalization–globalization efforts in Japan. We underline the importance of gathering key local-level stakeholders’ understandings and support of ELPP, as these agents are potential enablers of both macro (hereafter national) and higher educating meso (hereafter institutional)-level innovation and change.

Introduction

The writers of this paper have, in their contexts of teaching and research at a large private university in Japan, chosen to intentionally and deliberately follow, interpret, plan, and enact foreign-English language policy and planning (ELPP) based on what has been espoused in Japan at the national level by the government, by media, business interests, and by educators especially since the 1990s, particularly following contemporary globalization efforts both inside and outside Japan. We have also chosen to enact in our own pedagogy and students’ learning a synthesis of what we firmly believe are or ought to be the connections of globalizing–internationalizing the higher education curriculum, and at the same time enacting English language policy and plans to incorporate and integrate bilingualism and multiculturalism in that endeavour. The localized focus of enactment is consistent with an understanding of curriculum innovation as defined by Graves (2008). Enactment within this socioeducational model identifies the classroom as being embedded in “specific, complex and overlapping cultural, social, educational and political contexts-termed socioeducational contexts” (p. 153). In the following section of this paper, we will provide a contextual perspective of the Japanese socioeducational environment. This will enable, we believe, a deeper understanding of how ELPP, or other foreign language (FL) policy and planning, is contested by agents and agencies throughout the process.

Language policy-planning: global linguistic cultural diversity

At the outset of this paper, we wish to affirm our sensitivity and commitment to, and support for, a more ecological and just multilingual approach to ELPP in Japan, that will ultimately value the diversity of all languages and cultures, not only Japanese or Western cultures and languages used for communication in the world. Following Shek (2010) and Carroll (2001), we agree that Japan faces a great number of challenges concerning language policy-planning, and to develop implementational spaces required to accommodate the effects of globalization. Shek (2010) argues that the national ideology of assimilation and homogeneity, known as nihonjinron in Japanese, which emphasizes and privileges the uniqueness of Japanese ethnic identity and culture and which rejects influence(s) from “other” foreign cultures, is, as he terms it, “repugnant to the idea of globalization, which involves opening up to and engaging with different societies” (p. 1). This ideology, Shek maintains, is no longer tenable if Japan truly wishes to be seen and accepted as one important inclusive member of the international community.

Shek states that Japanese FL policy-planners and makers have to some extent recognized a need of Japan and its people to engage with different cultures and languages. This is exemplified, he says, in the 2000 National Deliberative Council of Japan report which states that Japanese should be flexible and accommodating in expressing themselves and comprehending what others say (Kokugoshingikai, 2000 cited in Shek, 2010) which seems to indicate a movement away from a staunch nihonjinron position. But even so, Shek maintains that overall Japanese (foreign) language policy and planning (LPP) on global literacy in the twenty-first century continues to stress Japanese language and culture, and urges people in Japan to treasure (their) Japanese language and acquire good Japanese language skills (Prime Minister’s Commission Report hereafter PMC, 2000, p. 20).

The most important point of the interplay of the ideology of nihonjinron and English-Western values language policy-planning is that there continues to be a misunderstanding, or ignorance, of the diversity of languages and cultures both in Japan, for example, minority, indigenous, FLs other than but also including to some extent English itself, which ultimately equates and combines Westernization (through English) with nationalism, and which does not to any significant degree promote or value what Kubota (2002, p. 14) calls “cosmopolitan pluralism” with respect to languages and cultures. Linguistic and cultural diversity has not only been contained, as Shek (2010, p. 5) suggests, but continues in our estimation to be undervalued and underappreciated in Japan with respect to non-Japanese LPP. This undervaluation is true even of English which for many at the national and local levels of planning and enactment is still conceptualized and practised as a BANA (British, Australasian, North American) only enterprise, a conceptualization and behavioural practice which itself undervalues the diversity of English language use and users in the global world.

These barriers to a more cosmopolitan pluralist approach to multilingualism and multiculturalism are problematic. Cosmopolitan and global frameworks, we argue following Byram (2008), have in different geographical locations revealed very different conceptualizations, in terms of internationalization, around issues of national identity and its relevance to LPP. Byram (2008) questions whether narrow economic imperatives are concerned only with globalization but not with internationalization, since it ignores “the domain of private attributes of tolerance and open-mindedness” (p. 29). Using an example of governmental policy documents from Sweden, in reference to internationalization, Byram points out that values of mutual understanding and social responsibility are prioritized over narrow economic interests. This presents a different understanding and motivation for developing, through national government policies, internationalization. A close examination of the initiatives at the national and institutional level can provide support or rejection of this private domain approach.

It is far from certain that maintaining conceptions of Japanese identity cannot be integrated within a more holistic and cosmopolitan framework. It is important to understand that with issues of policy and planning, there are always choices that are available. Whilst it is true that English in particular offers threats to national languages, opportunities do exist to articulate coherent policies that can be interpreted through sound and robust planning initiatives. Sadly to date this has not been the coordinated response of agents or agencies responsible for higher education institutions (hereafter HEI) in Japan. Hult (2005), recognizes how Sweden, faced with similar fears about the Swedish language, navigated a different course and prioritized different choices during language status policy drafting,

Nowhere does the proposal champion a return to an imagined but non-existent state of Swedish monolingualism, nor does it suggest that the only way to strengthen the position of Swedish is to weaken the position of English or other languages. Rather, the policy proposal is quite explicit about the need to foster multilingualism in Swedish society. (p. 76)

In the Japanese context, this need to interact with the outside world, that is, the global community as conceptualized as being mostly English-using with its accompanying values, has, according to Hashimoto (2000), given rise to the discourse of kokusaika. Kokusaika in Hashimoto’s estimation encourages Japan and its populace to be empowered through English to express unique Japanese homogeneous cultural identity rather than knowing about and using English to discover other peoples and cultures and their worldviews and values.

English is not the only language fit for a nuanced “diversity valuing” and “globalization accommodation” LPP. However, realistically speaking, valuing English as diverse itself in its spread and influence and use and users, as literacy communicative competence, rather than inert knowledge or emblem or certification, or a way and means of socialization and sorting, can serve as an important element to what Shek strongly feels is necessary: the valuation of global linguistic and cultural diversity. That being acknowledged, the present and future vibrancy of a nation-state and its populace in the twenty-first century largely rests on its ability to effectively educate its citizenry to be more globally aware, more globally knowledgeable and empathetic, and more globally capable. Lo Bianco (2013) suggests that changes, and the impetus for changes, often originate within societal, economic, and political interests and concerns rather than educational interests and concerns. Further, it has also been suggested that conflicts (contests) of interest surrounding objectives of language planning, compounded by more powerful groups in society trying to change others rather than themselves, creates a very fluid and complex socioeducational environment (Fishman, 1994; Haarmann, 1990). In the discussion below, a conceptual model of LPP will be developed that reflects a particular focus on Japanese LPP objectives outlined in this introductory section.

LPP in Japanese higher education (JHE) an ecological agency model

Language planning contributes to, or is directed by, language policy. Policy may be realized at a number of levels from very formal planning documents to informal discourses surrounding language, politics, and society (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997). What is evidenced in this discussion is the incoherence that can exist between policy and planning. Indeed, the lack of any substantive policy direction in the form of pedagogical planning is a prevailing weakness of Japanese national policy and planning initiatives (see Liddicoat, 2014). Peddie (1991) distinguishes between policy statements of a symbolic or substantive nature. The Japanese Ministry of Education (hereafter MEXT) consistently articulates the former over the latter. Informal statements of intent place the responsibility upon institutional agencies and local actors to interpret and enact planning and policy. A more detailed discussion of language planning helps to provide a framework for understanding the difficulties and challenges of local interpretation and enactment.

Haugen’s (1983) seminal model of the societal (status) and language (corpus) foci of the language planning process(es) provides a transparent framework from which to undertake both a descriptive and explanatory investigation of language planning and policy in Japan.

•norm selection (decision procedures)

•codification (standardization procedures)

•implementation (educational spread)

•elaboration (functional development)

This model can be examined in terms of form (policy-planning): norm selection and codification; and function (language cultivation): implementation and elaboration. In this particular discussion, the form of the policy and its elaboration through a conceptualization of internationalization will be considered, as this is the particular goal of the current language plans of MEXT. The activities that make up these processes are not always followed in a linear approach as practical language planning may require specific goal-determined actions (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997). It is not the intention of this discussion to suggest that internationalization, and its related educational objectives, can be reduced to the study of English (see De Wit, 2011 for further discussion of this topic). However, we firmly believe that English does offer one important dimension of socioeducational, perhaps even sociocultural, change in Japan. Therefore, describing how policy is selected and its elaboration through planning provides some descriptive and explanatory purpose to understanding particular LPP goals and objectives of MEXT.

Elaboration in specific regard to internationalization within the Japanese socioeducational environment is problematic. Whilst Japanese attitudes, to some degree, have not to this point reflected moves away from BANA to more localized interpretations of English usage, what is of greater importance is how FLs can provide access to a more cosmopolitan conception of multiculturalism. Haarmann (1990) argues for developing a complementary framework to Haugen for describing language-planning activities. According to Kaplan and Baldauf (1997), “prestige planning is a receptive or value function which influences how corpus or status planning activities are acted upon by actors and received by people” (p. 50). The status of a language reflects its relationship to other languages in a specific social environment. Thus, prestige is linked to how the social actors perceive this...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Language policy and planning in universities: teaching, research and administration
• 1. Language policy, planning, and enactment: the necessity and empowering potential at the local level
• 2. English-medium instruction in Japanese universities: policy implementation and constraints
• 3. Language policies in Puerto Rican higher education: conflicting assumptions of bilingualism
• 4. Language policy and planning: challenges for Latin American universities
• 5. Language planning at a cross-border university in Swaziland: the case of teaching and learning, research and institutional administration
• 6. Examining the English language policy for ethnic minority students in a Chinese university: a language ideology and language regime perspective
• 7. Towards reconciliation through language planning for Indigenous languages in Canadian universities
• 8. Carving out institutional space for multilingualism in the world’s most multilingual region: the role of Linguistics at the University of the South Pacific
• 9. Academic literacy as language policy in community college developmental writing
• 10. Fractionating English language proficiency: policy and practice in Australian higher education
• 11. Language, identity, and citizenship in a U.S. University: immigrant English learners’ identity (re)positioning
• 12. Conflicting views on language policy and planning at a Colombian university
• 13. Learner autonomy in foreign language policies in Vietnamese universities: an exploration of teacher agency from a sociocultural perspective
• 14. University administrators as forced language policy agents. An institutional ethnography of parallel language strategy and practices at the University of Copenhagen
• Index