This chapter introduces the geographic area covered by the book. It reviews the changes that have taken place since the previous edition in 2007, in terms of the people who live there, their distribution, and the languages they use, showing that Britain and Ireland are becoming increasingly multiethnic and are homes to a rich array of languages and dialects. It also provides an overview of the rest of the book.

‘Language policy’ is a highly diverse term, encompassing all attempts to purposefully influence language use. Government language policy is broadly considered to have originated as a distinct field of research and policymaking in the 1970s, but we begin the chapter with a historical review of its precursors dating back several centuries. We trace the roots of contemporary language policy to two broad historical developments: Bible translation and universal education. These laid the foundations for what would become language policy. In the contemporary language policy period, we divide our discussion across three fields: modern foreign languages (MFL), indigenous languages and community languages. These categorisations come from policy, not linguistics or sociology. These groups of languages are treated differently in policy, so we divide them accordingly and trace their origins and developments in three political eras from the 1970s onwards: neoliberalism (1970s–80s), New Public Management (1990s–2000s), and austerity (2008 onwards). We show how each field of language policy has been indelibly shaped and contoured by changing political conditions and priorities. Lastly, we consider forms of language that tend to fall outside the scope of government policy, and what extra this reveals about language policy.

Over c. 50 years, language education has been a significant site of ideological struggle over England’s position in the world, and the last two decades have seen intensification in the assertion of English nationalism in central government. Our analysis of this history starts with the development of multicultural language education in the 1970s and 1980s, highlighting the factors that contributed to this: activist pressure from minority communities, educational philosophies valuing the ‘whole child’, educational decision-making embedded in local democratic structures, and a legislative strategy that promotied good community relations. This started to change in the 1990s, with the curriculum centralisation and the side-lining of LEAs initiated by the Thatcher government. Efforts to regulate increased population movement also made borders and immigration status more of a priority than multiculturalism, and after 2001, security, social cohesion and the suspicion of Muslims started to dominate public discourse. These developments are analysed in six areas of language education policy: standard English, English as an additional language for school students, English for adult speakers of other languages, modern languages, and community languages in mainstream and supplementary schools. Finally, we consider the role of universities in these processes.

This chapter provides a brief sociolinguistic description of two Celtic languages that have experienced language death and revival: Cornish and Manx. First, their distinctive sociolinguistic position as revived languages is reviewed. There follows a structured discussion of the factors contributing to each language’s historical decline and more recent revival movement, followed by an overview of the current position of each language in terms of demographics and language policy provisions. We note that while both languages are revived, differences in timescale have left speakers with different concerns regarding reconstruction as a spoken vernacular, although both Cornish and Manx are affected by similar debates around purism and authenticity. More broadly, we emphasise that the fate of both languages is inextricably linked with the wider political landscape, and that the efforts of volunteer activists at a grassroots level are currently paramount in ensuring their visibility, in a context where more official sources of support are often unreliable.

Observing that a linguistically principled characterisation of standard English remains elusive, this chapter explores the indeterminacy surrounding standard English, as well as reasons why a broad consensus on what it comprises is challenging to achieve. This indeterminacy is particularly acute with regard to the concept of standard spoken English, where uncertainty has been exacerbated by the failure of the prescriptive grammatical enterprise to acknowledge systematic structural differences between written and spoken English as well as formal and informal speech. Although linguistic accounts stress that standard English is best conceptualised as an abstraction to which actual usage conforms to a greater or less extent, there remains a gulf between academic and public understanding of the standard language. This disconnect facilitates the perpetuation of obfuscatory ideologies which inform public discourse about standard English. These include tenacious beliefs in the infallibility of its norms and its putative superiority to non-standard varieties, which are routinely dismissed as ‘incorrect,’ ‘vulgar’ and ‘uneducated’, when not altogether discounted as English. Empirically accountable analyses of naturally occurring discourse furnish an indispensable corrective to highly idealised prescriptive accounts of usage, which often fail to capture many of the implicit regularities of actual speech.

The pro-Brexit campaign leading up to the 2016 referendum in the UK and in its aftermath was accompanied and driven by a narrative that was hostile to immigration and its cultural implications. Language played a role, with Leave campaigners criticising the presence of multiple languages in UK society and government agencies embarking on an 'English first' campaign that linked community languages to lack of integration and social incoherence. At the same time some arguments in support of foreign language learning embraced the Brexit narrative claiming that language skills will help post-Brexit Britain gain global influence. The chapter surveys different strands of UK language policy and concludes with an assessment of latest Census figures on language pointing to the increase in multilingualism.

While much attention has been paid to the creativity surrounding translingual practice, there has been little focus on the underlying politics behind such practice in periphery or precarious contexts. This chapter explores the political underbelly of translingual practice in the under-researched Muslim world through two case studies in English-medium instruction (EMI) universities in the United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh. Online and offline data are analysed through the lens of critical social inquiry. Ethnographic observations and metapragmatic reflections revealed that translingual practice is a key element of students’ identities with varying ideologies attached. The chapter explores the micro and macro relations influencing ideologies, such as linguistic and symbolic distances between languages, monolingualism, linguistic imperialism, neoliberalism, secularization and sacralization. The chapter specifically investigates how translingual practice problematizes dominant monolingual biases in higher education and monolithic approaches to social, political, and religious realities. The chapter also analyses internalized mainstream monolingual ideologies in some students, leading to feelings of unworthiness and shame over translingual practices. Thus, the chapter sheds light on sociolinguistic complexities of translingual practices in two under-investigated Islamic countries. Suggestions are made as to ways in which the current gap between complex sociolinguistic realities and monolithic policies can be bridged.

Many people have tried and failed to make English the only official language of the United States. In contrast to earlier studies of these national efforts, I argue that people in the English-only movement are really at their most successful when they focus on writing local language policies. Working in local governments and talking about the local community can make monolingualism seem practical at best, innocuous at worst. People who participate in the English-only movement are adept at drafting, copying, revising, sharing, and promoting language policies. At the same time, they are not a united front, in terms of either their motivations or their strategies. After introducing the topic, I address why English-only policies matter: They target people who are already marginalized, they oversimplify how language works, they are popular, and the strategies people use to write and promote these policies are ingenious. Finally, I discuss how I designed this study of the recent history of English-only policies using ethnography and other research methodologies.

This chapter provides a critical review of the blossoming of Linguistic Landscape (LL) as a research field in the early 21st century. Arguing that the LL itself is at least as old as written language, the chapter examines the multiple sources of contemporary LL research in such fields as onomastics, the visual arts, language policy and planning, and examinations of the social and linguistic outcomes of multilingualism, globalisation, and population movement. The chapter argues that the field of LL research did not stem from any one source, but instead developed from bringing together researchers from different interests and parts of the world. The chapter reviews terminology in the field from English and French, and argues for the use of LL as one which is broad enough to include a wide range of modes of expressing meaning, but retains a focus on language that gives it a distinct conceptual identity.

This chapter presents a panoramic view of elements in the Linguistic Landscape (LL), using photographs from Ireland, North America, England, and continental Europe. The discussion focuses on the operation of language policies and language choices, the regulation of space in the landscape, discourse elements in graffiti and social protest, and the position of the LL in reflecting and commemorating history. The chapter argues that while language display is crucial to the LL, any written display of language also includes visual and spatial elements which are part of the LL. Some elements such as orthography, letter shape, and text colour, are close to the language system. Others include visual images, the physical medium and ground used for the message, and the size and placement of the message. The chapter takes an inclusive view of language, referring to a wide range of displays that involve lexical elements and copresent modes of expressing meaning. A focus on the LL as discourse shows that restricting the LL to written language is overly limited, and that oral tradition and discourse must also be taken into account.

In this chapter, language choices in the Linguistic Landscape (LL) are examined in relation to official language policy and personal language choices. Particularly significant are signage units which express messages using two or more languages or other linguistic codes. Different codes can express the same message, but they may display different messages which may be aimed at different audiences. Rather than simply putting messages into particular linguistic envelopes, units of the LL develop intricate communicative actions in the choices of size and placement for particular languages, and in the different ways in which languages make references to texts and cultural features which lie outside the signage itself. Using photographs from 11 countries, the chapter also shows that the LL provides a forum for language play, displays of elite language, cross-linguistic typographical effects, and the incorporation of visual images into writing systems.

To explain Latinization of the Roman West, scholars have long searched for evidence of a language policy mandating the use of Latin. They have found none under the Principate. The Roman centre was not interested in policies involving all its subjects, and elite Romans were uninterested in languages other than Latin and Greek and had no concerns about their use, as long as the Empire’s functioning remained intact. Indeed, it is not clear that any such policy would have made much sense for provincials in illiterate and translingual environments. However, though there may not have been an Empire-wide policy of Latinization, there were certainly language ideologies and multiple narrowly focused facets of language management concerning the use of Latin and Greek in the running of the Empire.