Language and Power

Education has always been a powerful tool in the establishment and dissemination of language ideologies. Either (a) compare educational language policy in at least two different contexts, or (b) explore one context in more depth through an examination of both top-down [official] policy and bottom-up [community] material. You should consider which ideologies are being invoked, as well as the linguistic mechanisms by which they are naturalised or presented as common-sense.

FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS:

Your essay should focus on some dimension of power as it relates to language, as we have been exploring throughout the term. This may be power as it plays out on a personal level, or related to communities and groups of people, or engaged with political or economic forces on a larger scale. You may shape your essay around any topic that you find interesting, provided that it focuses on language and power, and is a response to one of the prompts provided. Your essay must include DIRECT ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE DATA, so part of your task is to find relevant data and to engage with it in a way that supports your argument. You must state very clearly how your argument and your data relate to power. Your analysis of the data should focus primarily on language, but you may include multimodal details if they are relevant.