Advocacy refers to types of acts or processes that aim at recommending, promoting and influencing policies to stakeholders in order to realize societal change. In language policy, advocacy groups attempt to influence education... [ view full abstract ]
Advocacy refers to types of acts or processes that aim at recommending, promoting and influencing policies to stakeholders in order to realize societal change. In language policy, advocacy groups attempt to influence education and social agendas such as adopting policies supporting refugees who fail in school content given their lack of proficiency in the new language, or adopt a new multilingual policy to expand the language repertoire. Various agents are involved in language policy advocacy such as researchers who promote applications of research findings to benefit students’ learning, NGOs, representatives of marginalized groups who seek more fair opportunities of immigrants for social participation. As to the processes of advocacy these include sharing research data, holding educational sessions, organizing meetings with practitioners and government agencies who can support changed policies.
In this invited symposium, using different models and frameworks of advocacy, we will report on six cases where researchers are engaged in advocacy activities targeting language policy issues. For each of the cases, the motivations, agency, acts of negotiations with various groups, and their impact will be described.
The introduction will provide a brief survey of the role of advocacy groups in language policy in recent history. The first paper focuses on the challenges faced by speakers of small or indigenous languages, especially with regards to characters that are needed for these languages but are not recognized by international organizations that coordinate the global character set.
Paper two reviews 15 years of NGO activities in a platform at Vienna university, focusing on conceptions of language rights that challenge traditional assumptions. The third paper focuses on advocacy within higher education in Catalonia comparing and contrasting first generation immigrants grassroots approach to the official language planning. The fourth paper discusses the implementation of a collaborative approach to policy analysis in the context of language requirements at universities. Paper five will discuss the complex dynamics of advocacy strategies towards altering monolingual policies and practices in Flemish schools. The sixth paper evaluates a series of advocacy strategies by language policy scholars that led to a proposal for a new multilingual language policy in Israeli schools.
