Competing Interests And Changing Priorities:Exploring Shifts In Discourses And Orientations Of Australia’s Language Policy

Since issues of language are central to issues of national identity, social equity, economic benefits, etc., language policy not only responds to language use but also suggests solutions to a series of non-linguistic issues concerned. Competing interests of different ethnic/socioeconomic groups are embedded in the coexisting yet somewhat contending discourses in Australia’s language policy; shifting priorities reflect transforming ideologies and drifting prioritized concerns of Australian society. The thesis aims to investigate how Australia’s language policy shifted in discourses and orientations between1987and1994, and to explore the interplay between such shifts and socioeconomic/ideological context.The research is informed by fairly rich scholarship, including the multifaceted function of language and conceptualization of language policy. The orientation theory provides a theoretical framework; nationalism theory, economic rationalism and labourism serve as effective analytical tools. Given their significance in the period to be examined and the macro approach that the present study takes, the three policy texts that are analysed in the present study are three policy papers promulgated at the national level, namely National Policy on Languages (Lo Bianco1987), Australian Language and Literacy Policy (DEET1991) and National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools (COAG1994).Seeing language policy as product of the socio-political and historical context in which it is created, the research employs a discourse-historical approach to conduct analysis at four levels, i.e. textual and intertextual analysis and investigation of extra-linguistic socio-political/historical and ideological contexts. Three specific research methods are adopted-discourse analysis, intertextual analysis and historical-textual investigation.The analysis of shifts in policy discourses is conducted under the thematic grouping of national identity, social equity and economic benefits. It is demonstrated that Australia’s national identity shifted from the mode of ethnic-based multiculturalism upholding pluralism and language maintenance to that of civic nationalism, which advocates literacy and national interest; economic benefits became the prioritized discourse, taking over the formerly favoured discourse of social equity achieved by equal outcome.Such shifts in discourses can be attributed to shifts in orientations as the result of changed socio-political and historical context. The language-as-right orientation had declined, partly due to the retreat of ethnic revival culminating in the1970s. In contrast, with the connotation of resource narrowing down to projected economic gains, language-as-resource orientation became the obviously prioritized policy motive, which was in response to the urgent need to address economic downturn and unemployment.Factors accounting for the shifts in discourses and orientations are explored in an even broader socioeconomic and ideological context under the dual framework of globalization/regionalization and Australian political culture. Redefined world economy demands language/culture knowledge as a crucial part of human capital. Australia’s endeavour of winning markets in the booming Asian economies had granted Asian languages with higher economic status. Advocacy for market mechanism and economic benefits embedded in the dominant ideology of economic rationalism may account for Australia’s language policy’s shifting towards short-term objective of economic gains away from ethnic-based multilingualism; utilitarianism prevailed in education. Influenced by labourism, language policy making began to take an elite top-down approach which regarded the marginalized minority groups as clients/objects rather than contributing members.