engleski

Coalitions of actors in the management of public signs

In the study of language policy and planning (LPP), the “actors” component of the LPP processes has not been much elaborated so far. To address this issue, this paper applies the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) which provides a model of this human component of the LPP processes. The ACF has been developed in political sciences in the study of policy change and – unlike in language policy – it has been applied in a variety of policy contexts, such as drug prevention, maritime protection areas, forestry etc. An “advocacy coalition” is a group of people and/or organizations who engage in a non-trivial coordinated activity over a longer period of time in order to achieve a policy change sharing certain policy-oriented beliefs and using the venues and resources available to them for their common goal. Language policy for public signage may become an object of such coalitions’ activities, but languages on public signs (linguistic landscape) may also become a mere venue (arena) for a political activity with a different goal, e.g., an ethnic minority policy, international relations policy etc. This paper provides a comparative analysis of coalition creation and recreation in several European cities with substantial ethnic minority presence in four different countries, including an "old" EU-member, two "new" EU-members and an EU-membership candidate country. Namely, the following cities are involved: Llanelli and Cardiff (Wales, U.K.), Békéscsaba (Hungary), Český Těšín (Czech Republic) and Pula (Istria, Croatia). The data for this study consist of photographic material, observations of behaviour towards signs and various types of discourse, such as media texts, Internet discussions, interviews with policymakers and “street” interviews with “ordinary” local people and visitors. These data have been analysed using Geosemiotics and Membership Categorization Analysis. The first goal is to demonstrate how the Advocacy Coalition Framework can enrich the study of language policy. The second goal is to show how, why and which social actors have (re)grouped to coordinate their activities aimed at which changes in the policy concerning languages on public signs in the selected European cities. Using the analysis of discourses on various languages in the local urban landscape, we are able to show how language management of individual and organized actors can be predicted. Pula, for example, seems to be a town where most of the actors we have identified are content with the existing language policy for public signs. Similarly, in Wales, the Welsh-English bilingualism on signs has been widely accepted as norm. Český Těšín, on the other hand, is more like a location for public debate at several levels. Békéscsaba is, however, in a way in between: some actors are satisfied, while others are looking for coalitions and new solutions.

coalitions; actors; language management; linguistic landscape; anthropology

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