Conference Agenda

Together with 15 colleagues from 12 universities in seven countries, we recently submitted our under-contract edited volume titled States of Language Policy: Theorizing Continuity and Change to Cambridge University Press. The volume is situated within the field of comparative politics, and it highlights state traditions that produce language regimes, which themselves have a powerful influence on language policy choices. The volume builds and expands on State Traditions and Language Regimes, edited by Linda Cardinal and Selma Sonntag and published at MQUP in 2015. We are hoping to organize a two-part thematic panel (4 hours total) showcasing eight chapters from the volume. Our intention is to start the first panel with an overview of the book and its theoretical and empirical contributions, before giving way to authors of chapters focused on the cases of Algeria, Canada, Hong Kong, the Isle of Man, Slovakia, the Ukraine, and Global English.

Path dependency relies upon historicity and context to understand how institutions sustain themselves through time and are compelled to change at critical junctures. Some consider this approach as being deterministic, focused on external shocks to institutions and more efficient at explaining stability rather than change. Others consider that there is also agency in institutional change, that actors may seize upon opportunities within institutions to find novel solutions to new challenges, or that a succession of incremental changes may fundamentally alter institutions without any external shock. We understand language regimes as being path dependent, while accepting that various actors may work within the regime to bring forth incremental changes in language policies. These changes may occur through various policy processes rather than through major disruptions. The impetus for this process may come from within the institutions, where State actors may try to adjust policies to a new context, or from language groups who express dissatisfaction towards the regime and mobilize to demand change. We will first discuss the possibility that language regime can change; second, we will draw upon the institutional literature to describe how a language regime may change; third, we will use the case of French in Ontario to illustrate this process.

The literature on Indigenous language revitalization is dominated by sociolinguistic and normative approaches that focus on “the vitality of languages, the multiple facets of linguistic landscapes, and the effects of language policies on individuals and groups” (Sonntag and Cardinal, 2015: 6). Very little research, however, has been done using the tools of political science and public policy to analyze the emergence of language policies or the choices made by governments and organizations to protect, preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages. Using an historical institutionalist approach, this paper will examine the decline and revitalization of Manx Gaelic (Manx), the Indigenous language of the Isle of Man, a small island jurisdiction in the British Isles. Manx has been critically endangered for many decades, following its slow decline during the 19th and 20th centuries, but in recent years has undergone a process of revitalization spearheaded by civil society organizations in partnership with government. The paper will identify and discuss the reasons why Manx went into decline and the opportunities and challenges associated with promoting and sustaining its revitalization.

Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine’s language regime has evolved in a context of intense cultural heterogeneity. The most crucial element of the language situation in Ukraine concerns cohabitation and intermingling between Ukrainian and Russian language-oriented populations.

Ukraine’s competitive state tradition produced a contested language regime. Formed at the crossroads of civilizations, it has been influenced by both East and West. The critical juncture of Ukraine’s independence marked a rupture with its past and generated a new language regime that actively embraced priority for the Ukrainian language. But because of its competitive state tradition, this language regime remained unsettled, solidifying only gradually and non-linearly. Inherited institutions that were both executive dominant and fragmented produced radical shifts when new elites took power. Through these shifts, Ukraine’s language regime has gradually coalesced around a dominant conception, though the tradition of competitiveness remains. Ukraine’s language regime reveals the embedded normative and institutional legacies of its experience under Russian and Soviet rule, as well as the reactive nationalism this imposition provoked. It continues to occupy a crossroads, pulled at once by East and West, paradoxically asserting the very monolingual nationalism perfected in Europe but now cautioned by appeals to minority language rights.

Hong Kong’s Handover from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 could have brought about rapid and momentous changes to Hong Kong’s language regime. Change, however, has for the most part been incremental, and much of the British-era’s language regime remains largely intact today, including the salience of English in many domains. At the same time, language policy changes did occur, mainly through the educational policy of Biliteracy and Trilingualism, which added Mandarin to the de facto English-Cantonese bilingual regime. However, nearly half-way through the transition period, Mandarin use has made few notable inroads in Hong Kong society, though there are signs that this may be about to change—perhaps drastically so. This paper analyses the evolution of Hong Kong’s language regime from its unique perspective as a city connected to the global community like few others, and located between two state traditions—one marked by pluralist, laissez-faire capitalism, and the other by Communism and totalitarian state nationalism. Overall, this case study of Hong Kong contributes to our understanding of colonial legacies, competing mobilizations, incremental change, multi-level governance as it helps to expand the STLR framework.