The Balance Of Interests And The Politics Of Compromise

Australia is a typical migration country and is one of the birth places of multiculturalism policy.Starting from scratch and going through changes,Australian language policy presents rather special features.Serving the national interest,languages policy in Australia are reflections on the interests and appeals of different ethnic groups.Scholars in the language policy and planning discipline always attach importance to the research of Australian language policies.Representatives of these scholars like Michael Clyne,Joseph Lo Bianco and Uldis Ozolins have devoted to the research on formulation process,main contents and the hidden interests of each policy.And they made fair contribution to Australia language policy research.As an academic discipline,Language Policy and Planning(LPP)researches on"behaviors toward languages" in the broad sense.The research of policy documents of one nation falls into the study of LPP.Language Management Theory(or "LMT'' for short)is one framework/approach in LPP research.This approach was first initiated by J.V.Neustupny and B.N.Jernudd in 1986 and later it developed rapidly.LMT treats language research in a broader sense;history,culture,social convention,religious faith,geopolitics and anthropology are all related to LMT approach;so LMT approach can provide deeper and thorough understanding towards the research object.It is widely acknowledged that the appearance and development of LMT indicate the new direction of LPP rationales.So the present research draws upon the basic concepts and major principles of LMT and selects three most representative policy documents put forward by Australian government for study.The policies examined are National Policy on Languages(Lo Bianco 1987),Australian Language and Literacy Policy(DEET 1991)and National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools(COAG 1994).Through the analysis of these three policy documents and the innovative application of the paradigm of LMT,the present thesis attains the following conclusion:Australian language policy is the outcome of the balance of interests and appeals of different ethnic groups(mainly English speakers.Indigenous language speakers and community language speakers).Affected by geopolitics and economic development,the planning goals have changed from status planning to promoting language planning in education field.At the same time,the hidden ideologies of language policy have shifted from multiculturalism and harmonious coexistence to economic rationalism.As for the politics of compromise,it is achieved through the interaction of different institutions during their involvement in the language planning process and the compromise may take the form of "bottom-up" and"top-down" in Australian language policy.Finally,the competing interests and the behavior of compromise can be viewed through the contexts of economic rationalism and labourism.