Language ideologies indicate how individuals perceive languages in terms of their roles and uses, including what the languages represent and do for people, and how they shape and regulate social attitudes and practices. As epistemological belief structures, language ideologies may direct and shape (or, conversely, may get influenced by) language use, language policy, and language teaching and learning (Spolsky, 2004). Language ideologies are therefore considered integral components of language-in-education policy (Ricento, 2006). In this paper, I report and discuss rural primary school teachers’ English ideologies in relation to the local languages and the extent of connection of these ideologies with the language-in-education policy followed in primary schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Employing an ethnographic approach to researching language policy (Johnson & Ricento, 2013), I used narrative interviews, observations and participant journals for collecting primary data from two teachers each at three rural primary schools in the province. The data was thematically analysed by sorting it into relevant codes, categories and themes using qualitative software NVivo10 . The findings revealed that the teachers’ English language ideologies seem to conform to the dominant linguistic marketplace, where they perceive English firmly entrenched as the powerful language. They negatively associate the English language in Pakistan with colonialism, ‘foreign’ culture and elitism. At the same time, they believe that it acts as a gatekeeper to success, opportunity, employment, upward mobility and prosperity, and hence must be used both as a subject and medium of instruction across the primary schools in Pakistan. In that, their English language ideologies take influence from, and in certain cases contradict, the ideological narratives inherent in the language-in-education policy in Pakistan. Implications of this for Pakistani language-in-education policy are discussed.
References
Johnson, D. C., & Ricento, T. (2013). Conceptual and theoretical perspectives in language planning and policy: Situating the ethnography of language policy. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 219, 7–21. doi: 10.1515/ijsl-2013-0002
Ricento, T. (Ed). (2006). An introduction to language policy: Theory and method. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Spolsky, B. (2004). Language policy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
