Ecological Language Education Policy - Discussion

The article that I am going to lead the discussion about is titled "Ecological Language Education Policy", which is an article from the book "Handbook of Educational Linguistics" written by Nancy Hornberger and Francis M. Hult.

The first author, Hornberger, is a professor of education in University of Pennsylvania as well as the director of educational linguistics program. Her research interests are mulilingual language education policy and practice, focusing on inndigenuous and imigrant heritage language education

 

The second author is Francis M. Hult. He is an assistant professor in applied linguistics in University of Texas in San Antonio. His academic interests include language planning and curriculum development. He is also a co-editor of Handbook of Educational Linguistics.

This article mainly talks about the ecology of language in relation to language planning an policy. The authors discuss the basic principles of language ecology, its application to language policy and planning, followed with short discussions of their research on this area.


Originated from the from natural sciences,  the ecology of language, according to the authors, has been influential on the study of multilingualism (p. 280). Haugen as the first person using that term in the field of multilingualism proposed it as an approach to study the interaction of language  and users as interdisciplinary. 


While currently this approach has developed into diversified branches of sciences, it holds some key points in its analysis. Language ecology maintains that languages create their own 'metaphorical' ecology in which languages interact with each other as well as with their society. Societal multilingualism is interested in how such relationships and interactions occur in the minds of multilingual speakers. Hornberger ad Hult, further state that the language ecology theory allow linguists to see investigate theinteaction between societal multilingualism and individual behaviors. 


From the perspective of language ecology, languages "evolves in the context of social environment (p. 282) and it metaphorically show characteristics of living things: They grow, change, develop, as well as die. This is, in my perspective is not really something new in linguistics. Since long time ago, historical linguists have contended that language  evolves,  it showed characteristics of living things. However, ecology of language enables us to see how such evolution occur as a result of interactions between languages as well as their social environment. 


Hornberger and Hult, are interested with this concept as it can help them to understand and investigate language planning and policy (LPP). So in this article they discuss some applications of ecological approach to some studies of LPP in different places. Using their own studies as examples, the authors describe how languages interact with with other dimensions such as polictical, sociological psychoogical, etc. 

As far as I am concerned, this article perhaps is not really much related to this week's dicussion of complexity theory and ecology of writing. However, I also see that we can see some similarities between them. First, we can see that writing has its own ecology where many component interact with each other to create a certain complexity. This also happens to languages and their social environment. So, in a sense they show similar characteristics in that they create such 'metaphorical' ecology where the component interact with each other. Even, I think the ecology of writing is, to some extent part of the language ecology, in that there is a relationship between writing and the linguistic environment, especially in the multilingual situations.


So, for our class discussion, I would like to invite us all to contemplate on this, trying to see how multilingual situations might complicate the ecology of writing? How, in such linguistic environment as in US this thing matters? As a non-native speaker of English as well as a non-resident of US, I view US as multilingual country where some different languages (not only English) interact with each other to create ecological niches (Calveat in Hornberger and Hult 2008, p. 281). I also would like to invite us to take a short look at the phenomenon of World Englishes and the fact that the number of non-native speakers of English learning English is increasing rapidly (For example, Harmer 2007). How would this fact impact, if any, the composition class?

References

Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English Language Teaching (4th ed.). Essex: Pearson Education, Ltd.

Hornberger, N., & Hult, F. (2008). Ecological language education policy. In B. Spolsky, & F. Hult, The Handbook of Educational Linguistics (pp. 280 - 296). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.