The hidden face of public language policy: a case study from the UK

Humphries, Emma and Ayres-Bennett, Wendy 2023. The hidden face of public language policy: a case study from the UK. Current Issues in Language Planning 24 (5) , pp. 508-533. 10.1080/14664208.2022.2150497

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Abstract

In which domains and for which language types does language legislation occur and how easy is it to identify it? The United Kingdom (UK) affords a good test bed to answer these questions since it is often considered to be lacking in strong public language policy due to, amongst other things, a lack of a coherent language policy across the UK and its devolved administrations and a perceived societal disinterest in languages. Through analysis of a corpus of primary and secondary legislation from the UK and its constituent jurisdictions that contain stipulations about language(s), this article shows that UK language legislation spans multiple domains, including public health and safety, law and crime, transport and the media. Whilst some of the legislation, such as the Welsh Language Acts, explicitly deals with language(s), the vast majority of the UK's legislation which contains provisions concerning language(s) is hidden in legislation which primarily concerns another domain. Although hidden, at times these language stipulations mark important landmarks in the status of languages. All this has consequences for the UK language policy landscape, potentially diminishing the perceived importance of languages in and to government and affecting policymakers' ability to collaborate across government in a coherent way.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
ISSN:	1466-4208
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	8 September 2023
Date of Acceptance:	8 November 2022
Last Modified:	02 Nov 2023 14:12
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/162307

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