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- Educational and pedagogical aspects of bi- and multilingualism,
especially as it pertains to American linguistic minorities, Black English,
and educational achievement. Comparison with other multilingual polities
(e.g. South Asia) that valorize multilingualism. Sponsorship of pedagogical
and educational programs, training practitioners to participate in the
construction of language policy, rather than just observe and describe it.
- Officialization movements and their place in US history; the California
and other English-only initiatives and their effect on educational policy.
- Attitudinal studies: the social-psychological study of attitudes
about language and its connection with ethnicity, religion, caste, gender,
race. The study of folk notions of language policy, as evidenced in folk
culture: the language of comic strips, cartoons, advertising and
science fiction; the use of dialect in literature.
- Historico-cultural development of belief systems about language.
Origin myths, and ongoing mythologizing about the origins of
language, the use of language, the status of certain varieties.
Religion and policy; language, religion and education; positive and
negative ethnolinguistic consciousness; the holiness of texts and
scripture; the power of incantations.
- Diglossia and its role in literacy, educational achievement, the
definition of what is a language; diglossia and its role in language
maintenance and shift.
- Language socialization, acquisition, and developmental studies.
Growing up bilingual/bidialectal in the US, India, Tunisia, or Perú.
Next: Resources of the University
Up: Proposal to the Ford
Previous: Some gains, some losses
Harold Schiffman
8/17/2000