Unlocking the grid: Language-in-education policy realisation in post-apartheid South Africa
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Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Routledge
Abstract
This paper reflects on the state of educational language policy two decades into a postApartheid South Africa caught between official multilingualism and English. The
focus is on the national language-in-education policy (LiEP) that advocates additive
bi/multilingualism, and a provincial counterpart, the language transformation plan
(LTP). Using Ricento and Hornberger’s onion metaphor, the paper seeks to uncover
the meanings of policy realisation in education at legislative, institutional, and
interpersonal levels. The LiEP’s non-realisation at institutional level is indexed by a
‘gridlock of collusion’ (Alexander, personal communication) between political elites
and the majority of African-language speakers, who emulatively seek the goods that
an English-medium education promises. To illustrate how teachers can become policy
advocates, data are presented from a bilingual education in-service programme that
supported the LTP. The paper argues that sociolinguistic insights into speakers’
heteroglossic practices should be used to counter prevailing monoglossic policy
discourses and school language practices, and that all languages should be used as
learning resources. Strategic essentialism would recognise the schooling system’s
need to separately classify language subjects and to identify the languages most
productively used for teaching across the curriculum. The paper concludes with a call
for the revision of the LiEP.
Description
Keywords
Language policy, Multilingualism, Heteroglossia, Education, South Africa, Teaching
Citation
Pluddemann, P. (2014). Unlocking the grid: Language-in-education policy realisation in post-apartheid South Africa. Language and Education, 29(3), 186-199