The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy

Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics

by Bernard Spolsky (Editor)

Over the last 50 years, language policy has developed into a major discipline, drawing on research and practice in many nations and at many levels. This is the first Handbook to deal with language policy as a whole and is a complete 'state-of-the-field' survey, covering language practices, beliefs about language varieties, and methods and agencies for language management. It provides a historical background which traces the development of classical language planning, describes activities associated with indigenous and endangered languages, and contains chapters on imperialism, colonialism, effects of migration and globalization, and educational policy. It also evaluates language management agencies, analyzes language activism and looks at language cultivation (including reform of writing systems, orthography and modernized terminology). The definitive guide to the subject, it will be welcomed by students, researchers and language professionals in linguistics, education and politics.

Genres: Linguistics

756 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2011

About the author

Bernard Spolsky was educated at Wellington College and Victoria University and received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Montreal.

He has been the head of the English Department, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Director of the Language Policy Research Center at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, where he is currently Professor of English.

Bernard Spolsky has conducted and published research in language testing, second language learning, computers in the humanities, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and language policy. He has been President of TESOL, held a Guggenheim fellowship and a Mellon fellowship, and has been Senior Research Fellow at the National Foreign Language Center in Washington.

He has written several books for Oxford University Press: Conditions for Second Language Learning, Measured Words and Sociolinguistics.

Reviews

[Kyo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very wide selection of topics concerning language policy, with loads of different examples and considerations. It did drag a little and sometimes the line of argument was a bit vague with the amount of detail mentioned.

[Morgan]

I did not exactly finish this but this was for school and I read the parts that I needed to read. This was a really good and helpful book about language policy. Different authors and lots of different elements touching around language policy