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This paper constitutes an edited transcript of two online panels, conducted with four scholars whose complementary expertise regarding print literacy and migration offers a thought-provoking and innovative window on the representation of print literacy in applied linguistic research and in migration policy. The panel members are experts on language policy, literacy, proficiency and human capital research. Together, they address a range of interrelated matters: the constructs of language proficiency and literacy (with significant implication for assessment), the idea of literacy as human capital or as a human right, the urgent need for policy literacy among applied linguists, and the responsibility of applied linguistics in the literacy debate.

In his examination of successful innovation and change in education in many settings, Fullan (2001) identifies the three broad options for effecting change that public authorities have at their disposal. They can seek to bring about change through imposing accountability (system-wide or targeted), or through providing incentives (either "negatively" as pressure or "positively" as support), or they can direct their attention towards "capacity-building" for key agents in the field being addressed, such as teachers, schools or universities. The review of Australian language policy shows that rarely has there been a consistent process of building on previous innovation and rarely are these three meta-strategies of accountability, incentives and capacity-building used in the judicious combination which is most likely to succeed. A central feature of education policy making is the critical, professional role of teachers and it would be to this that a capacity-building approach would be directed. This article discusses choice, pedagogy, rationale and goals in language teaching and learning. Key values and aspirations for proficiency in languages other than English relevant to the Australian context are also explored. ["Language Teaching and Learning: Choice, Pedagogy, Rationale and Goals" was written with Yvette Slaughter.]

This article discusses the different effects arising from deliberations on language policy in conferences dominated by professionals compared with the interests, priorities and demands of geo-political and military security coming from defense interests. The paper proposes a three dimensional way to understand language policy: text, discourse and performance, and discusses strains and tensions placed on language policy that aims to serve explicit security agendas. Such tensions and strains are particularly strong for those languages spoken by minority populations who are sometimes forced into ambivalence between local and national identity, citizenship loyalty and the promotion and retention of needed language skills. Technical or rationalist approaches to language planning analysis fail to capture the performative and discursive dimensions of language planning under such strains, remaining at the descriptive level of policy texts and their formal declarations of intent. Community or heritage language activists negotiate such tensions but for some categories of language professional, such as interpreters in war zones who are required to mediate between occupying and occupied forces, these tensions can be extreme. The paper considers language in espionage where severe tensions are imposed between its communicative-secretive functions.

In addressing the needs of second languages, the principle must be to build quality at all levels, especially in the design of programs and the rigour and seriousness of teaching and to maintain a consistent effort rather than to subject language planning to continual chopping and changing of priority. Quality programs will need to be readily identified and have clear criteria, of the amount of time devoted to language teaching, continuation of study, teacher qualifications and support materials and opportunities for immersion as well as formal acquisition. Explicit policy efforts must be made to secure student motivation. It is engendered by the quality of the learning experience, and by rewards for success. The aim should be to make languages a compulsory, unproblematic and celebrated part of the education of all Australian children. Achieving an entitlement to quality language courses is the outcome it is hoped will flow from taking the hard decisions outlined in this article. ["Language Teaching and Learning: Some Hard Decisions" was written with Yvette Slaughter.]

The article addresses the contribution of multilingualism to cultural diversity and the importance of explicit, comprehensive and public language planning to secure a stronger future for endangered indigenous and immigrant languages. It is critically important to develop language policies that ensure the access of minority populations to prestigious forms of national standard languages and literacies while supporting the intergenerational retention of minority languages, both indigenous and immigrant languages. These twin objectives are complementary but require a more expert practice of language planning. The multilingualism which is advocated aims to be nationally cohesive, economically productive and socially just. An enhanced practice of intervention on behalf of multilingualism is discussed in sections devoted to the mechanisms and activity of language policy-making. Contemporary globalisation is a challenge for language diversity but in some ways makes the intergenerational retention of diverse languages more feasible than under conditions of strict assimilation as practiced by linguistically defined nation-states. Also potentially supportive of multilingualism are the voice-based communication technologies that overcome the tyranny of distance and dispersal, and promise access to information, communication and solidarity for preliterate groups or those that have limited literacy. The roles of language in memory and cultural production underscore how central language in its various genres is to culture. As a result, efforts to appreciate and foster human differences require awareness of the importance of multilingualism. The endangered state of many of the world's languages and the now almost universal phenomenon of multiculturalism make the practice of language planning a central instrument for states, international agencies and non-governmental bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends a taxonomic system initially developed by Kloss to describe constitutional and more broadly legal-political categories for language policy in the United States to the Chinese situation. The article extends the taxonomy of spheres of language planning action from sovereignty and jurisdiction to include influence, acquisition, and retention and recovery. These categories are applied to the wide framework of learning and teaching Chinese that is following in the wake of the vast expansion of the economic and the emergent geo-political presence of China. The taxonomy is used as the basis for discussion of the articles comprised in this special issue of Language Policy whose content and key arguments are incorporated in the present article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines specific issues encountered in various areas of Chinese teaching in Australia. These issues are linked to the spheres of language planning as acquisition and as recovery and language planning as retention (Lo Bianco, 10.1007/s10993-006-9042-3). Specifically relevant to Chinese in Australia is its current prominence in formally declared national language policy, its changing status over time and its similarities and differences with Chinese in the United States (Wang, 10.1007/s10993-006-9043-2). The internationalization of education, and its commodification, has in recent years led to a major expansion in the range of offerings in Chinese in Australia, now catering to growing, and in some institutions to numerically dominant, groupings of native speakers with radically different language and academic needs from the traditional clientele of tertiary and school Chinese programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the work of Dante to provide a historical perspective, this paper discusses the connection between nations, states and languages. Dante practiced both policy and cultivation approaches and, as a language strategist, he had a profound impact on the language directions of fourteenth-century Italy. By introducing the questione della lingua Dante set the terms of language debate in Italian public life and established himself as a language planner, and as a theorist of nationality and linguistic nationalism. Today, urbanisation, progressive aggregation of populations into larger identity groupings and the globalisation of economies appear to have led to a contraction in the vitality of many languages and pluralisation within and across communication systems. Alongside this reduction in language vitality is the challenge to nationalism itself. What relevance can Dante’s thought offer to those engaged with the possible dissolution of both nations and national languages — key ideas in the poet’s language planning work? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]