Stephen May

In this afterword, I focus on two key contributions that this special issue provides for ongoing discussions of linguistic justice in relation to the internationalization of English. The first is its attempt to address previously reductionist accounts of linguistic justice in political theory, which construct languages only in relation to their communicative value, thus stripping them of their identity functions. This contributes in turn to an often naive valorization of English as the language of wider international communication, and its apparent centrality to the expansion of deliberative democracy worldwide, alongside a problematic construction of multilingualism as an obstacle to such processes. The second relates to the increasing need to explore the interstices between linguistic racism and linguistic justice, not only through the lens of raciolinguistics but also related work in language ideologies and the social physcology of race/ism and discourse.

This chapter explores whether modern nation-states can or should formally accommodate the language varieties spoken by national and ethnic minorities within their borders and, if so, in what contexts and/or to what extent? The privileging of state-sanctioned, national languages, an allied predilection for cultural and linguistic homogeneity, and the consequent public delimiting of the use of other minoritized language varieties in the public domain, have also been reinforced by developments in international law, particularly post–World War II. The sociolinguist Heinz Kloss captures this distinction in his use of the terms “tolerance-oriented language rights” and “promotion-oriented language rights.” Developments in international law for national minorities are at once both encouraging and disappointing. Polyethnic rights are intended to help ethnic minorities to continue to express their cultural, linguistic, and/or religious heritage, principally in the private domain, without it hampering their success within the economic and political institutions of the dominant national society.

This introductory chapter situates the volume at the intersections of language policy, language teaching and learning, and identity, while also positioning the editors within these debates through their personal and professional trajectories. Stephen May reflects on his path from monolingual schooling in New Zealand to a focus on Indigenous and multilingual language policy. Mi Yung Park draws on her experiences as a heritage speaker and immigrant academic to examine mobility, heritage language education, and identity. Gary Barkhuizen highlights identity as a central, dynamic resource in language teaching and teacher education. Together, their narratives frame the volume’s key concerns: the tensions between monolingual ideologies and multilingual realities, the uneven outcomes of language-in-education policies, and the transformative potential of mobilizing learner and teacher identities.

This book draws together leading international scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language teacher education to explore language policy,