This book examines the ideological underpinnings of language-in-education policies that explicitly focus on adding a new language to the learners' existing repertoire. It examines policies for foreign languages, immigrant languages, indigenous languages and external language spread. Each of these contexts provides for different possible relationships between the language learner and the target language group and shows how in different polities different understandings influence how policy is designed. The book develops a theoretical account of language policies as discursive constructions of ideological positions and explicates how ideologies are developed through an examination of case studies from a range of countries. Each chapter in this book takes the form of a series of three in-depth case studies in which policies relating to a particular area of language-in-education policy are examined. Each case examines the language of policy texts from a critical perspective to deconstruct how intercultural relationships are projected.

Anthony J. Liddicoat is Professor in Applied Linguistics at the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures in the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages at the University of South Australia. His research focuses on language and intercultural issues in education, conversation analysis, and language policy and planning. His numerous publications include Language Planning and Literacy (2007), Language Planning in Local Contexts (with R.B. Baldauf, 2008), Intercultural language teaching and Learning (with A. Scarino, 2013) and An Introduction to Conversation Analysis (2nd edn, 2011).