A module with the word ‘policy’ in its title could provoke a grimace or a drawn-out yawn. But in fact, whilst at first glance Language Policy and Planning (LPP) may seem to be quite a dry topic, it is actually a very human one with real-world social, political and cultural implications. LPP decisions impact what languages we learn at school, what languages we are taught in and can nurture or inhibit linguistic diversity.

The socio-political aspect of LPP highlights how dominant groups use power to control and marginalise minority language users. But, LPP is not just a top-down process led by governments and institutions. At a micro-level, we are all actively engaged in language planning and essentially contribute to creating language policies in our everyday language practices.

Originally developed as a branch of sociolinguistics, LPP is very much an interdisciplinary field. Among other things, in this module we explore LPP and its relationship with education, post-colonialism, nationalism and language rights. We will look at the complexity of LPP decisions with case studies from regional, national and international contexts.

Language is intimately linked to identity and how we define ourselves, and others and understanding the issues in LPP is very relevant in today’s global, mobile, transnational world. This module also complements the second-year Multilingualism module as LPP decisions are intrinsically linked to language loss and language revitalisation.

Language Policy and Planning is available as a final year option on our single honours degrees in English Language or Linguistics and all our joint honours English Language courses. It is also available on our Language in Context MA.