The Approach

The ELI project sets out to develop and implement a unique interdisciplinary approach to the ethical analysis of language policy that draws on the complementary strengths of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and normative political theory.

In their treatments of language policy issues, applied linguistic and sociolinguistic research frequently invokes normative notions such as freedom, fairness, equality, rights and democracy. Normative political theory can help to bring theoretical rigour and conceptual clarity to such work, by providing an in-depth appreciation of these concepts and the different ways they can be interpreted. It can also help to encourage a more constructive engagement with the inevitable power relations that characterise the politics of language and with the more practical and necessarily normative concerns of language policymakers.

For its part, language policy research in normative political theory often tends to be abstract and can rely on somewhat reductionist and predominantly territorialised understandings of language. The empirically grounded nature of applied linguistic and sociolinguistic research offers more nuanced ways of looking at language, encouraging normative approaches to engage with local political and linguistic sensitivities, practices and needs. In this way, applied linguistic and sociolinguistic research can contribute to a ‘contextual political theory’ (Carens 2000, 2004), which investigates when and to what extent factors particular to specific cases might be pertinent for the purpose of reaching balanced ethical judgments, in this case in language policy matters.

In this way, the project seeks to contribute to the further development of the emergent interdisciplinary area of research known as ‘normative language policy’, by focusing on the timely contemporary topic of linguistic integration.

Reflecting the project’s desire to transcend disciplinary boundaries, one of the outputs will be an online interdisciplinary bibliography of pertinent publications on linguistic integration, which will be available on the website within the first year of the project.