ABSTRACT

Language planning and policy has evolved from considering policy as one of states’ affairs at its early stages to how policy actors exercise their agency to appropriate and enact policy in micro and local contexts. Ethnography of language policy is predominantly used today to explore why policies are enacted in a certain way and not otherwise, shedding light on policy actors’ ideologies and their role in bringing about specific consequences. This article engages with the ethnographic approaches to language policy studies from the perspective of sociological realism. It argues that grounding ethnographic studies in realist social theory can not only accommodate recent developments in the field but also further our understanding of how policy actors’ agency is informed by factors from other strata of the society which could go unnoticed in ethnography of language policy. To illustrate, the case of policy enactment in kindergartens and preschools in Tabriz is presented.

摘要

语言规划和政策已经从早期将政策视为国家事务之一发展为政策参与者如何在微观和地方背景下行使其代理权来制定和制定政策。如今，主要使用语言政策民族志来探讨为什么以某种方式而不是通过其他方式制定政策，从而阐明政策参与者的意识形态及其在带来特定后果方面的作用。本文从社会学现实主义角度探讨了人种学方法对语言政策的研究。它认为，基于现实社会理论的人种学研究不仅可以适应该领域的最新发展，而且还可以进一步使我们理解，政策制定者的代理机构是如何从社会其他阶层的因素中了解到的，这些因素在语言政策的人种学中可能不会被注意到。为了说明这一点，介绍了大不里士幼儿园和学前班制定政策的情况。