This volume of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics returns to a topic first covered in Volume Two (1982). In the time-span between thematic volumes on Language Policy and Planning (LPP), major changes have evolved in the field and recent world events have led practitioners to rethink many issues and concerns related to language policy and planning. In the early 1980s, many LPP discussions centered around various national case studies of language policy and planning; indeed, the stress on policy, as separate from planning, was not often emphasized. The focus on non-national level planning was also not as common as the national-level focus.

For much of the 20th century, language policy and planning has been essentially overlooked except as an academic enterprise, being of serious interest largely only to a small coterie of specialists scattered thinly around the world. Still, at present, only a handful of universities in the world offers anything more than a random course in language policy/planning or simply subsumes the entire field in a couple of lectures in the introductory course in sociolinguistics. In the last decade of the 20th century, real-world events have thrust language policy and planning into prominence. The collapse of the former Soviet Union and the powerful resurgence of language loyalties in various Eastern European polities, the rapid economic unification of a multilingual Europe, changing global patterns of immigration, and global economic difficulties have coalesced to create new linguistic conditions and focus attention on long existing linguistic inequities. These conditions have brought into serious question the western notion of an idealized identity between nation and national language. This volume of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics has attempted to draw together various emerging perspectives on language policy and planning and to examine emerging circumstances in a selected set of illustrative areas:

Johann Gottfreid Herder illustrated how problematic language maintenance predictions can be with his prediction in his essay, On the Origin of Languages, stating that Hungarian would briefly disappear from the surface of the earth as if it had never existed. With over 10 million speakers today in Hungary, another 4 million outside the nation, and a growing population (Hungarians in the Outside World 1993), Herder's prediction remains hyperbolic, yet it illustrates how dangerous such predictions about language maintenance can be. Hungarian, as with other languages, has been maintained because of forces operating in the unique history of the nation.

Since World War II, the political order that divided the world into nationstates has been remarkably stable. The balance of terror during the Cold War prevented major changes in the world system. With minor exceptions, such as the emergence of Singapore as an independent polity shortly after the foundation of Malaysia and the breakup of highly artificial geographically divided Pakistan into two separate states, even most of the countries that had come into existence as the result of decolonization did not change their borders. However, while the bi-polar system of the political and military stand-off of the two superpowers continued, a triangular world system developed on the economic plane. During the 1970s Japan became a major economic force, while the integration of the European Economic Community continued. Since the end of World War II, the United States has had close economic ties with both of the economic powers.

This chapter provides a descriptive review of research on language-ineducation policy and planning. We intend no theoretical generalizations but rather a descriptive summary of present research (1990–1993). With various interpretations of language-in-education policy available in the literature, it is first necessary to establish the perspective which guides this review. Ingram (1990), for example, confines language-in-education to second or foreign language teaching and learning although he mentions literacy and bilingual education as topics in language-in-education.

Naturally enough, the field of language planning, as its name suggests, has concentrated its efforts on the description and practice of planned language development. This is after all its raison d'être, to provide future oriented, problem-solving language-change strategies to meet particular language needs. This orientation means that language planning is one of the key descriptive topics in applied linguistics, bringing together as it does theory from a variety of disciplines and putting that into practice. Grabe and Kaplan (1992) estimate that the applied linguistics aspects of language policy and planning make up one of four categories that accounts for about 45 percent of the items published in this field.

The recent events promoting European integration have far-reaching consequences for language management. Such management may form an explicit part of policy, though often it is reflected implicitly in interventions dealing with other aspects of social and political organization. This article will highlight both explicit and implicit language planning issues at the European level, the latter being more the result of policy interventions rather than deliberate attempts to manipulate language usage. Given constraints on space, it is impossible to handle more specific language planning issues at national or regional levels except as illustrations.

While the United States has never declared a national official language, the primacy of English in public affairs has been well-established since the time of the earliest colonies (Crawford 1992a, Ruiz 1988). This is so in spite of the reluctance on the part of the British colonial authorities and, later, leaders of the early republic, to legislate matters of language—considered traditionally one of the most fundamental freedoms of civilized societies (Heath 1992). English even at that time was considered a language of political, economic, and social power and prestige; its preeminence in the United States, as elsewhere, has been reinforced in recent times by its establishment as a language of technology.

It is an especially opportune time to reflect upon Canadian language issues, since the recent constitutional crises-still unresolved-have at once brought them into sharp focus and demonstrated how closely language, culture, and politics may be intertwined. The official policies of bilingualism and multiculturalism, in particular, have been receiving considerable attention. The players-the French and English “charter groups,” the aboriginal populations, and non-indigenous non-English/non-French groups (the “allophones,” who possess “heritage” languages)-have, consequently, been presenting themselves and their agendas with rather more force and acerbity than usual. Full accounts of the political upheavals, and the ramifications for language policy are now becoming available (e.g., Edwards in press a; in press b; in press c).

Australian federal and state government language policy and planning efforts have had a remarkable effect on Australian educational and non-educational life during the past twenty years. This effort has resulted in strong international recognition of the Australian language policy experience. For example, Romaine, in the introduction to her anthology focusing on the languages of Australia states that “the movement to set up a national language policy is so far unprecedented in the major Anglophone countries” (Romaine 1991:8).

In 1992, the author of this paper was invited to New Zealand to work within the Ministry of Education on the development of a New Zealand National Languages Policy. Prior to the arrival of the author, Waite (1992a) had prepared a comprehensive document laying out the language issues in New Zealand (see also Peddie 1991). A search of the documentation available in New Zealand (see, e.g., Kaplan 1981, National Language Policy Secretariat 1989) suggests that the notion of a National Languages Policy has been under discussion in New Zealand for more than a quarter of a century. Largely, that discussion has produced a great number of seminars, retreats, symposia, colloquia, and other meetings, and a plethora of reports, most now overtaken by time.

Hong Kong has a population of 5,902,100 people crowded into its land area of 1076 sq. kms. In broad terms, 98 percent of its population are Chinese.1 They speak Cantonese among themselves and English in dealing with expatriates. The expatriate community, once predominantly British, now reflects the full range of national and multinational commercial and banking interests, including those of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. Luke and Richards (1982) described Hong Kong as having diglossia without bilingualism.

Mexico's multilingual and multicultural character predates European contact. In its long history, it has generated many communicative challenges as well as interesting language planning efforts to deal with them (Heath 1972). Most recently, official acknowledgments of Mexico's multicultural and multilingual character are raising a series of complex language planning and policy issues even as they are leading to important constitutional and material gains on the part of indigenous Mexicans.

South America, widely known as a “Spanish-speaking” part of the world, is in fact a region of great linguistic diversity and complexity (see Table 1). The history and hegemony of the colonial languages, Spanish and Portuguese; the elusiveness and elitism of immigrant languages such as German, Italian, Japanese, and English; and the variety and vitality of the indigenous languages have combined to pose continuing challenges to language planners and policy makers. For the colonial languages, which have long enjoyed official status, the pressing language planning issues are those concerning standardization vis-a-vis national and international varieties. Immigrant language concerns maintain a relatively low profile in the policy and planning arena.

An advantage of Namibia's late attainment of independence is that it can benefit from the experience of other African countries that achieved independence some thirty years earlier. Hence Namibia is unique in that it is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that at the time of attaining independence already provided for constitutional rights for its local languages. The major policy document of the then liberation movement SWAPO, Toward a language policy for an independent Namibia (United Nations Institute for Namibia 1981), which was published in Lusaka by the institute (UNIN) as proceedings of a seminar held in 1980, essentially set the trend for the policies pursued since independence in 1990.

Academic involvement in language policy and planning in South Africa must be seen within the context of the country's sociolinguistic complexity and the relationship between language and a number of serious problems in the country. South Africa's sociolinguistic complexity (see Appendix) is a function of a number of factors: 1) a multiplicity of languages and cultures; 2) the overlapping demographical and geographical distribution of the country's major languages; and 3) the politicization of these languages and cultures due to both the colonial past and the policy of apartheid, and the differentiated linguistic manifestation of their politicization.

As the review articles commissioned for this volume clearly indicate, the past two years (1992 and 1993) have been particularly rich ones for scholars concerned with language policy and language planning issues. As I reviewed these contributions, I was struck by the salience of five cross-cutting themes which seemed to underpin many of the articles-and indeed much of the current work by the profession. I propose to identify and comment briefly on each of these themes, and then to conclude by alluding to two relatively neglected areas of potential future concern. The five somewhat interrelated themes include: the role(s) of language policy or planning activities in foreshadowing or marking major world (political) events; the growing concern with ethnic revitalization; the correlates and consequences of continuing migration and mobility; the differential perceptions of the role of the mother tongue in primary education; and the potential contributions of language planning to educational and national development.