engleski

Immigration Language Policy Practices and Population Censuses in English-Dominant Countries: Monolingual or Multilingual Focus?

National language policies are at the centre of current sociolinguistic investigation. Countries with a considerable number of minority communities, and especially those with major immigration inflows, represent the most interesting sites for language policy analyses. This paper offers such an analysis of language-related data obtained from questionnaire forms of population censuses in four English-dominant countries: the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The discussion opens with an outline of advantages and disadvantages of using such data in language policy analyses. It is then followed by the presentation of the United Nations suggestions for devising census language questions. The central part of the paper includes a comparison of selected types of language data, namely those of (i) the number and wording of language questions in questionnaires, (ii) the provision of help in completing questionnaires in languages other than English, and (iii) the language policies of the four countries. This part of the paper also provides an analysis of educational implications deriving from language policies and population censuses. The concluding remarks summarise our results and link these ones to the issue of language ideologies.

population census, language policy, language ideology, English-dominant countries

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