Making language policy: Australia’s experience · Lo Bianco, Joseph “Making language policy:...

Lo Bianco, Joseph “Making language policy:Australia’s experience” in Baldauf, R. B. Jr. andLuke, A. (eds.) Language Planning andEducation in Australasia and the South Pacific,(Multilingual Matters 55) Philadelphia,Clevedon, 1990.

by Joseph Lo Bianco

Introduction

This paper describes the Australian experiencein formulating a national language policy andanalyses some of the more important features ofthe policy and of the process which led to itsadoption. The description of the process, andany generalisable validity it may contain, may bea valuable contribution which the Australianexperience can offer to language policy (theoryand practice) in the world. The developmentand acceptance of the national policy onlanguages has been essentially a process of statusattribution. It was the evolution of a languageconstituency which was sufficiently coherentand strong to find unifying common groundamong widely disparate groups which,ultimately, was the determining factor inbringing about the acceptance of the policy bygovernment.

Fishman, Das Gupta, Jernudd & Rubin (1971:293-302) and Fishman (personalcommunication, 1987) have called for thedocumentation of language policy processesfocusing, among other aspects, on the interestbasis which underlies them and on how this ismanifested in particular situations. This paperaddresses the development of the policy as asocial process - a social process viewed from theperspectives of politics, social psychology andsociolinguistics.

The Status of the Policy

Language issues have attained a prominence inAustralian public life which is unprecedented.At the highest levels of government there arefrequent declarations about language questionsand their intersection with important economic,nation-building and equity goals.

On the 26th April 1987 the Prime Minister, theHon R. J. Hawke, announced theCommonwealth (Federal) government'sendorsement of the National Policy onLanguages. He stated:

let me turn to another initiative of my government...the implementation of a national policy onlanguages... The Government commissioned [thepreparation] of a report on a national policy onlanguages... the Government endorses that report...Let me take this opportunity to announce that weare committed to fund an integrated package in theAugust budget to implement the national policy onlanguages. (Hawke, 1987a).

The policy was released in the Senate on the 4thMay 1987 (Hansard, May 1987: 2240) withSenator Susan Ryan, then Minister forEducation, repeating the government'sendorsement. On the 5th June the FederalCabinet voted a budget towards the initialphases of implementation of the policy. On the18th June 1987, launching the Immigration andEthnic Affairs platform of the Australian LaborParty, the Prime Minister announced a 'packageof measures' which were to be regarded as theconcrete, implementing programs of thelanguage policy. A press release jointly issued bythe Prime Minister and Minister for Educationaccompanied the platform statement. Bothstressed such aspects of the policy as the supportfor the maintenance of ethnic community

1Making Multicultural Australia Making language policy: Australia’s experience

Making language policy:Australia’s experience

languages, Aboriginal languages and theextensions to programs for teaching English as asecond language. Mention was also made ofsome economic aspects of the policy. At theopening of the new Parliament following theJuly 1987 election, on the 14th September, theGovernor-General, Sir Ninian Stephen, repeatedthe government’s commitment as part of itsprogram for the present term of office. Thecommitment was officially confirmed by theTreasurer in his 1987-88 budget and in theaccompanying papers.

On the 15th December 1987 the governmentreconfirmed its funding of the Policy and itsendorsement of it, as well as announcing thecomposition of the Australian Advisory Councilon Languages and Multicultural Education(AACLAME) which will oversee itsimplementation and further development.

This statement stressed the economic aspects ofthe policy. It focused on the labour market andthe ways in which tackling adult illiteracy levels,extending English proficiency and teaching'trade languages' would benefit Australia'seconomic performance. Already some ambiguityabout goals and some tension about priorities isevident in the different emphases revealed in thevarious statements.

On the 9th and 10th March 1988 AACLAMEheld its inaugural meeting, the first occasion inwhich a constituted representative body hasattended to broad issues of language policy andthe implementation of explicit Commonwealthpolicy on language in Australia.

The content of the policy will be described afteran account is given of the history of languageplanning in Australia. The recent history of theprocess which led to the adoption of theNational Policy on Languages will also bediscussed.

Seeing Languageand Acting on it

To the dominant sections of society language isvirtually invisible. 'Language' is their medium

for exercising their influence over affairs butsince 'their' language - their particular dialectand the registers they command within theirlinguistic repertoire - is neither in a state ofattrition, nor stigmatised, deficient or aberrantin any important way, it is rarely an issue. Thesociety reinforces and reflects their language.There is no contrast, no problem which isencountered frequently and which is predictablewhich can, in the common-sense judgments ofordinary people on language issues, lead them toregard language as a social question requiringexplicit 'treatment' or attention.

For linguists, and others who care aboutlanguage (whether for aesthetic, cultural, socialjustice or other reasons), it seems natural toadvocate deliberate planning of languagedevelopment in society and in its institutions.For such people language has a natural salience.They are used to detaching language from its'embeddedness' in social relations betweengroups, in ideology, text, schooling, culture andso on and making it visible.

Language professionals investigate language insystematic ways. Language artists use it tocreate. They are conscious of the socialcorrelates of language such as the present andpredicted sociolinguistic patterns of language insociety; the trends towards attrition or theevolution of stable inter-generationalmaintenance of more than one language in agiven speech community. They attend to issuessuch as the cultural impact of the loss of aminority group's language; the intellectualbenefits of bilingualism; the location oflanguage in the brain and the strategies learnersemploy to make meaning in a language overwhich they have only partial control. Thisconstant attending to language and its correlatesmakes it highly visible.

For groups whose language is not society'sdominant language - whether they are animmigrant minority, an indigenous minority ora group with a communication disability - thesame is true. For these groups the contrastbetween their language and the society'sdominant instrument for conferring power,


access to information and knowledge isencountered daily. Language becomes a problemin the ways it restricts access and socialparticipation and in the ways it makes thesepossible. Language is seen and felt to beimportant.

For some whole societies language is a salientquestion. Its correlation with issues of politics,with the institutionalisation of conflict andcompromise is a constant reminder of languagequestions. For many countries, recentlyindependent, which are trying to reconcilepublic administration and education in aninherited colonial language with the revival ofan indigenous language, or the selection andelaboration of one among competing varieties,language is a social problem of great magnitude.The felt need for nationalism impels themtowards the propagation of indigenous norms;the felt need for access to advanced technicalskills and the literature of powerful knowledgeespecially in new technologies impels themtowards preserving the 'foreign' language. Theinherited colonial language is often the meansfor communicating with a wider world.

Other countries become conscious of languagewhen institutionalised arrangements forcontaining linguistic conflict change or breakdown or cannot be set in place. Among suchcountries are many developed nations. Othershave expressly externally-oriented economicneeds which dictate the ways in which languagecomes to be seen, resulting in language planningwhich is centred around economic goals.

It seems inevitable, then, that in the absence ofa dominant group whose language interestscorrelate with a practical pressing problemsocieties will not regard language as an issuerequiring the attention of policy makers.Language policy - and indeed the sort ofexplicit, deliberate, conscious attention tolanguage which can be considered languageplanning - will not occur. Power-holders indeveloped countries invariably seem to regardlanguage policy and planning as either aphenomenon of Third World countries or as aperipheral concern of major interest only to

domestic minorities in developed countries. It isinteresting to note in this regard that one of thefirst and still a seminal text on languageplanning is subtitled Sociolinguistic Theory andPractice for Developing Nations (Rubin &Jernudd, 1971).

In developed countries like Australia consciousand deliberate language planning seems only tooccur in response to social or economicproblems which derive from language questions,or which have a strong language dimension. Inaddition to such 'problem-solving' languageplanning, there is the explicit attention tolanguage planning and language policydevelopment which is undertaken to facilitatethe achievement of established or emergingsocial, political or economic objectives of givensocieties.

The absence of explicit policy on language issuesdoes not mean that policies on language do notexist. Rather, such policies are implied in relatedactions which the society takes. Explicittreatment of language issues in policy is usuallya consequence of a highly salient set of languagederived problems which the society mustconfront. The conceptual basis of the AustralianNational Policy on Languages is socio-politicallanguage planning. It is largely concerned withstatus planning for languages in Australia,especially for language education. The moretechnical linguistic dimension of languageplanning (corpus planning) is concerned withthe issues of the codification of languages(dealing usually with orthographies) and theelaboration of languages through various means.Much technical linguistic work has beenundertaken on Aboriginal languages inAustralia, some on Australian English and someon Australian Sign Language and some onAustralian non-English community languages.Although this is technical work undertaken bylinguists, it invariably also will involve someattention to status questions since the normswhich are developed by linguists, no matter howrational they may be, will require propagation toensure their acceptance both by the ordinaryusers of the language and, importantly, by thepower holders in the language community

3Making Multicultural Austral ia Making language policy: Australia’s experience

concerned.

At the societal level, however, the absence of anyexplicit, overall, guiding set of principles untilrecently requires that previous policy be inducedfrom practice. Organisational theory tends toview policy as the elaboration of explicitprinciples to guide action. A more usefuldefinition might be action directed by anintention to achieve a predetermined result,regardless of how unconscious this may be.Whatever problems or deficiencies the NationalPolicy on Languages may have, at least theprinciples underlying the policy have beenenunciated clearly and the choices which flowfrom these have been asserted. These can bemodified and improved if and when review andevaluation of the policy find this necessary.

At some points in Australian history direct,forceful and unambiguous decisions were madeabout language questions. The amendmentsbrought into the education acts of several statesto repress bilingual education in the seconddecade of federation are the clearest examples.Despite this, and the only recently repealedregulations restricting electronic media use oflanguages other than English, English has hadno officially sanctioned status in Australia.

Historically, then, Australia has 'planned' forEnglish monolingualism modelled on southernBritish norms. This has rarely been explicitlyaimed for - usually it has been implied in otheractions and can only be discerned by analysingthese actions. What are the main ways this hasbeen done? First, there has been a pervasivestigmatisation of Australian English. English asit is used in Australia has often been comparednegatively with southern British norms ofEnglish, characterising the Australian variety asuneducated, rough, unsophisticated and so on.These associations usually are transferred to thespeakers of the language varieties with the clearmessage that more desirable and prestigiousqualities are attainable through modifyingAustralian speech habits. Recent years havewitnessed a major breaking down of this sort ofstereotyping.

Second, there has been the active, deliberatedenigration and repression of Aboriginallanguages. This resulted in the extinction ofmost of the languages of the southeastern partof the continent by the time the coloniesfederated to become a nation in 1901. Of theapproximately 260 Australian languagesassumed to have been spoken at the time ofCaptain Cook's arrival in Australia only ahandful may still be spoken by children in theyear 2000.

Third, a wide range of forms of opposition hasbeen directed at non-Aboriginal ethnic minoritylanguages. Although the last decade and a halfhas seen a dramatic turn around in theappraisals of and intentions towards theselanguages, the rate of language shift away fromtheir use and the degree of failure to acquireproficiency in their use among youth is high.

Fourth, in addition to this there has been amajor neglect of second language education inschools. This has permitted a situation of seriouscrisis to emerge in which the numbers ofstudents taking languages has declineddramatically at all but the primary levels, where,due to the community languages movement ofthe 1970s and 1980s there has been asubstantial growth in language offerings, courseand program types.

A fifth historical problem area has been thetreatment of the language and communicativeneeds of the deaf. Although this factor couldnot obviously lead to English monolingualism,in some cases as recently as ten years agoattempts were made to stamp out the use of signlanguage among the deaf.

Australian language planning has been, insofaras broad generalisations are possible, firmlywithin the implicit and often unconsciouscategories of the continuum of socially directedactions on language. This has been punctuatedby occasional deliberate intervention, usually fornegative purposes representative of particularpolitical positions and cultural values.


The Interest Bases ofAdvocacy on Language Policy

By origin the Australian population comprisesthe following elements:

(1) Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders;comprising approximately 1% of thetotal population;

(2) Australians from the United Kingdomand Ireland of three or moregenerations and comprisingapproximately 60% of the totalpopulation;

(3) Australians from non-English speakingbackgrounds of three or moregenerations ago comprisingapproximately 5% of the totalpopulation;

(4) Australians of first and secondgeneration English speakingbackground comprising approximately14% of the total population;

(5) Second generation Australians of non-English speaking backgroundcomprising approximately 8% of thetotal population; and

(6) First generation Australians of non-English speaking backgroundcomprising approximately 12% of thetotal population (CAAIP, 1987:11).

These groups approximate the broad divisionsof the constituency for language issues inAustralia. What are the interests which thesegroups perceive as their own and how do theyadvocate them?

In linguistic terms all these groups are variedthough none so much as the first. Despite beingthe smallest group, Aborigines and Torres StraitIslanders are by far the most heterogeneouslinguistically. Indigenous Australians includespeakers of over 150 Australian languages,

several Papuan languages, at least two stableCreoles and some distinct varieties of English.The state of these languages can varyenormously, as do the sociocultural contexts inwhich the speakers reside. The attachment tothe language spoken varies greatly too,influenced by both communicative andsymbolic factors. A heightened attachment tothe language spoken cannot always be predictedfrom the state of health of the language,although it seems generally to follow that theserious attrition of a language tends to produceheightened attachment to it as emblematic ofthe group's identity and, consequently, tends tolead to agitation for action on behalf of thelanguage. Perception of the strength of alanguage sometimes leads to concerted advocacyfor continued support - non-speakers of theparticular language who may have lost their ownancestral language sometimes will, for symbolicreasons, advocate support for the stronglanguages. In all, the relationship of a group ofspeakers to its language(s) is highly complex andthat complexity is well represented amongAborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

English speaking Australians are, of course, alinguistically more homogeneous group. Thepositions which they take on language issues arevaried. The history of deprecation of AustralianEnglish has produced a continuum of opinionsabout it from 'whether it exists', to 'is it notugly or intellectually impoverished', all the wayto sophisticated advocacy for it in terms of the'national character', of 'our language', to therelativist acceptance of linguistic divergence andvariation. To this day it embarrasses someAustralians that Australian English is usedoverseas. The language issues which most agitatethis group, however, are not about English butabout the choices made for second languageteaching in schools and the policies regardingthe teaching of minority languages - whetherimmigrant or indigenous.

Australians of non-English speakingbackground, particularly the more articulateEnglish-speaking younger generation are at theforefront of advocacy for the maintenance ofminority languages - immigrant and Aboriginal


- in addition to English. There are majordifferences between different ethnolinguisticgroups. As with the Aboriginal communities itfollows that the perceived state of health of thegroups' language often indicates the predictedposition, for example, a perceived shift awayfrom its use by children and young adults oftenleads to supportive action for the language. Thisis not always the case since the perceivedstrength of the language within some groups canimpel them to supportive action and amongother groups the perceived weakness by thegroup of the language can lead them toutilitarian judgments that transference toEnglish is desirable as well as inevitable. Thenext two sections deal briefly with past policiestowards ethnic minority languages andAustralia's indigenous languages.

Language Policy andCommunity Languages

English monolingualism seems to be an accuratebrief description of Australian educationalpractices in relation to immigrant andAboriginal students until relatively recently. Ifthese practices have changed it is only slightly.The prevailing slogan could still now be said tobe English proficiency with residual family orimmediate community directed skills in themother tongue. It was as though policy makershad intuitively understood the language ecologytrends revealed by sociolinguistic research inNorth America, that shift to English by non-English speakers, whether immigrant orAboriginal, would occur primarily as a result ofthe greater prestige of English, that is, itsexclusive association with social and economicmobility. In both financial terms and in terms ofclear policy, the efforts made either to teachEnglish as a second language (for manyAborigines English as a foreign language) and tosupport non-English languages either ineducation or more generally have been less thanwould be required if the true policy had beenaiming at bilingualism.

Since the post-World War II migrationprogram, four distinct phases have characterisedlanguage policy approaches to ethnic minority

languages. First, there was the period until1969. This could be called the laissez-faire phasesince there was no intervention by theCommonwealth or State/Territory authorities asfar as either mother tongue development fornon-English speaking children is concerned, norwas there even any systematic attempt to teachEnglish as a second language. It was simplyassumed that English would be 'picked up'. Inthe late 1960s and early 1970s theCommonwealth set up the Child MigrantEducation Program whose purpose was (and stillis) to teach ESL. This became law with theImmigration (Education) Act of 1971 in whichthe Commonwealth assumed the responsibilityfor English instruction as a consequence of itsconstitutional responsibility for recruitingimmigrants.

From the early to mid-1970s there was thephase that can be called the 'rights-equality'phase. There was much agitation during theseyears. This was a part of a broader socialactivism which characterised urban Australia atthe time and reflected somewhat the so-called'ethnic revival' in the U.S.A. Articulate andactive ethnic community groups began toagitate for public intervention on behalf of awide range of claims including language issues:primarily interpreting/translating services andEnglish teaching. This advocacy was fuelled bymuch government sponsored research whichseemed to be showing that, contrary to theexpectations and beliefs of the previous phase,there were persistent and predictable socialinequalities correlated with non-Englishlanguage ethnicity, especially in terms ofoccupational and educational prospects.

The third phase began towards the middle ofthe 1970s. It could be called the 'culturalist' or'multicultural' phase. In part, it took off froman aspect of the previous phase involvingadvocacy of mother tongue teaching of ethnicminority languages, largely because it wasbelieved this would enhance the acquisition ofEnglish. The emergent discourse renamed theselanguages 'community languages' largely toconnote their greater immediacy in Australianschools. The main feature of this phase, which


was partially engineered by governments as anideological corrective to the overtly politicalcharacter of the rights-equality phase, was that itreplaced equality as the focus of debates withculturalist explanations of the positions ofmigrants in Australian society. Accordingly, thepurposes of the multicultural programs whichwere initiated by the key text of this time - theGalbally report - were to encourage socialharmony, social enrichment, diversity within anadherence to certain core values in the society.The target was the whole society (Ga l b a l l y, 1978).

Hence, by the early 1980s the debate onprograms and policies for ethnic minorities hadevolved to the present one in which there is apattern of gravitating to one or other pole of the'rights-equality' and 'culturalist' phases -pursuing the goals of overcoming disadvantagesand therefore targeting programs at minoritieson the one hand and, on the other hand,pursuing socially enriching and harmoniousrelations by targeting the whole community.Two other key factors had also emerged,holdovers from the mid-1970s. The first was thevery pronounced economic and, in particular,trading relationship the nation now increasinglyconducted with Asian non-English speakingcountries. The second was the serious decline ofschool second language education. Both are toocomplex to deal with in detail here but bothcame to have a significant impact on the presentstate of conceptualising language issues inAustralia.

The decline in school second languageeducation impelled professional language people- linguists, applied linguists and languageteachers - to call for national action to correctthe situation. In so doing they came to examinethe situation in terms of the language ecologytrends of minority languages. At the same time,the economic directions brought about acoincidence of national economic goals withlanguage goals converting some of the lobbyinginto a more 'hard-nosed' advocacy which wasmore acceptable to government.

In two states in particular - Victoria and SouthAustralia, and to a lesser extent in New South

Wales as well - the state governments had set upcommunity language and bilingual programs. Inmost primary schools this innovation was thefirst bilingual education since the forced closureof the Lutheran German language bilingualschools during 1916-1918. In additionCommonwealth per capita funding support forethnic community schools had stimulated agrowth in the language maintenance efforts ofcommunities themselves. A decisive changeoccurred in 1982 when the Federation of EthnicCommunities Councils of Australia convenedconferences around the country on the theme ofcalling for a national approach to languageissues. In organising these conferences, theFederation assured the participation of othergroups with an interest in language questions:the deaf, language professionals of various kindsand, of course, Aboriginal groups (FECCA,1987). It was out of this agitation and advocacythat the Senate investigations commenced.

Language Policy andAustralian Languages

The history of the treatment of Aboriginallanguages in Australia is more longstanding andmore extreme than that of the ethniccommunity languages. Furthermore, given thatlanguage shift away from an Australian languageresults in the death of the language itself theurgency of responding positively to the demandsof the Aboriginal community is greater.

When the British first arrived in Australia it iscalculated that there were approximately 260languages being spoken. Estimates put dialectalvariation at between 500 and 600. The results of asurvey by Black in 1979 found that only 115 ofthese languages then remained. The majority had lessthan 500 speakers, and many languages stood on theverge of extinction. The rapidity and finality of thedeaths of 145 languages in 186 years will be hard tomatch elsewhere in the world.(Fesl, 1987: 13)

Fesl identifies the Early Period during which'land grabs' and the introduction of diseases towhich the indigenous population did not haveimmunity resulted in the deaths of many people

7Making Multicultural Austral ia Making language policy: Australia’s experience

- especially children who would have been thetransmitters of their languages to successivegenerations. The setting up of reserves for the'protection' of Aborigines followed and manypeople were removed to these reserves forcibly.This continued with the forced separation offamilies and the distribution of children andadults to work as free menial domestics and aslabourers for white families. A wide range ofmeasures including a prohibition on the use ofAboriginal languages, the forcing together ofgroups which did not share a commonlanguage, the denigration and stigmatisation ofAboriginal languages contributed to theextensive death of Australian languages. By thetime the colonies had federated into theCommonwealth of Australia, most of thelanguages of the southeastern corner of thecontinent were no longer used. Due both to theremoteness and sparseness of the population,and to the discouragement of the learning ofEnglish by Aboriginal people to ensure theirdependence in some areas in northern Australiaon the dominant English speaking white society,Australian languages survived. Fesl thendescribes the assimilation periods during whichconcerted attempts to bring Aboriginal peopletogether in centralised reserves was extended tothe northern parts of the continent. Thisaggregation of people was accompanied byeducation programs which stressed Englishalone. The reaction to these attempts was theoutstation movement whereby Aboriginalgroups moved away from reserves to attempt tore-establish traditional life. In the early 1970sthe Commonwealth government set up the firstbilingual schools in areas of Commonwealthjurisdiction in education. (See also Russo &Baldauf, 1986:303 310.)

Some bilingual education had existed prior tothese programs being set up but these wereisolated, private initiatives. By the late 1970s afew programs, especially those controlled byAboriginal communities themselves had evolvedinto maintenance programs which attempted tosecure and extend the proficiency of children intheir non-English mother tongue as well as toimpart skills in English. These are the exceptionsince the majority of the existing programs,

although many seek to impart literacy in theAboriginal language, are very much transitionalprograms reflecting a belief that this is moreefficient insofar as the acquisition of Englishlanguage skills are concerned.

Despite the progress which has been made manylinguists and Aboriginal people can still askrhetorically: How many Australian languageswill be spoken by children at the turn of thecentury? If the present rate of attritioncontinues unabated and the new threat ofsatellite television, broadcast to the remotestparts of the continent, is unable to be convertedto the task of using local languages, the answermay be very few indeed.

By the early 1980s Aboriginal language activists,linguists and community representatives hadevolved an alliance of interests with ethniccommunities in lobbying for a nationalapproach to language policy which supportedthe maintenance and development of Australia'snon-English languages. The social processwhereby this, and other alliances, produced aconstituency for language issues in Australia isdescribed in the next section.

The Principles and Programsof the National Policy onLanguages

Following the very strong advocacy byprofessional groups and ethnic and Aboriginalgroups, the Senate decided in May 1982 to referthe question of language policy to its StandingCommittee on Education and the Arts. Theirinvestigation produced the report entitled 'ANational Language Policy' in October 1984.The first recommendation of the Senate's reportwas that:

language policies should be developed andcoordinated at the national level on the basis of fourguiding principles, namely:

(1) competence in English

(2) maintenance and development of languages otherthan English


(3) provision of services in languages other thanEnglish

(4) opportunities for learning second languages.

(Senate Standing Committee on Education and theArts, 1984)

Almost two years after the Senate’s report waspublished, no decisions had been taken on it.The 114 recommendations made - includingthe first, that there be nationally developedpolicies on language - had represented majorproblems for government. Internal attemptswithin the Commonwealth EducationDepartment and cross-departmental committeeshad been unable to draw from the Senate'sreport a policy and a coherent set of programsacceptable to government.

I was engaged as a consultant from July 1986 todraft a policy for the government in response tothe Senate's investigations. At its simplest, thiswhole process consisted of converting the bestprinciples which have underpinned languageplanning in the past into explicit statements ofdesired objectives and into the establishment ofprograms to take these towards realisation. Todo this involved describing the context forlanguage policy at the national level and thefactors which shape it. Four which wereimportant in developing the policy are dealtwith briefly here.

The first crucial factor which constrains nationalpolicy development on language is the Federalnature of Australia. Schooling, for example,remains primarily the responsibility of the statesand territories. The Commonwealth isresponsible for setting broad policies which actas the parameters for education as well as forresourcing schools and higher education. Thepolicy on languages had to take this intoaccount and it had to attempt to establish aconsensus on the principles underlying thepolicy, and on the jurisdiction and roles of thedifferent bodies. This consensus seeks to evolvea partnership between a wide range of virtuallyautonomous bodies on issues of language. Thetask is especially complex in cases involving

English as a second language programs and inAboriginal education. In such instances there isan explicit constitutional responsibility of theCommonwealth or a responsibility conferred onit by virtue of referendum. The neglect of suchshared responsibilities - shared because botheducational domains are also state and territoryresponsibilities - and the inadequateappreciation of the importance of evolving apartnership of shared goals have resulted in pastlanguage policy failures.

A second crucial factor is Australia'sgeographical proximity to a large number ofculturally very different non-English speakingcountries. Whatever other justifications exist forlanguage teaching and learning in Australia, theproximity of large and small non-Englishspeaking neighbours is significant. Australia'srole as an English language centre for thepurposes of providing aid and for economicpurposes, as well as the widespread teaching andpromotion of Asian and Pacific languages, areamong the implications which flow from thisconsideration. The motivations thus tend to beinstrumental and utilitarian. It should be notedthat community based advocacy of languagepolicy in the past has neglected, naively, toacknowledge the pragmatic (economically andpolitically derived) perspective which inAustralia has proved to be a critical factor inattaining government support for a nationalpolicy on language.

A third crucial factor is the great diversity ofAustralia's linguistic demography. Given thedominance of English in Australian society andthe presence of a significant number of non-English speaking groups including speakers ofvarious Aboriginal languages, the questions ofbilingualism, bilingual education, languageecology, interpretation/translation, and themedia are central considerations. The politicalstrength of a broadly based constituency ofgroups interested in language issues was thesingle biggest factor in the successful campaignfor language policies to be acknowledged as alegitimate function of the Commonwealthgovernment.


Less obvious than the previous three, the fourthfactor concerns the impact of moderntechnologies. Technological innovations willhave a dramatic impact on the prospects for thesurvival of Aboriginal languages, on theprospects for the maintenance of othercommunity languages, and on recreational andemployment opportunities in language relatedareas. The displacement of workers from thejobs traditionally held by non-English speakersby the application of advanced technologies tomanufacturing creates increased demand forEnglish courses specifically designed forindustrial retraining. Further to this, the growthof information and communicationstechnologies will have major ramifications forthe place and development of literacy and oracyin schooling, especially with such developmentsas voice instruction modes on computers. Yet,the learning of second languages can bediversified and enriched by the application ofadvanced technologies and the maintenance ofcommunity languages can be enhanced byincreased access to the language variety andvocabulary of their native-speaking peers.Children prefer to model their language on theirpeers and contact with such varieties can behighly motivating. The imminent expansion ofsatellite based transmission of television toremote areas of Australia carries with it bothpotentially positive and potentially destructiveprospects for the survival of Aboriginallanguages. All these factors were able to sustaina rhetoric associated with the advocacy of thelanguage policy which assisted in its beingperceived as 'modern' and 'contemporary' andnot 'backward-looking' or 'nostalgic'. Thisperception, furthermore, positively assisted theclaims made before political bodies.

The policy is related to broad social goalssummarised under the headings of Equality,Economics, Enrichment and External. Thesecapture four key themes and were crucial in thedevelopment of a set of arguments to justifyCommonwealth government involvement inlanguage policy making, for each of thesethemes intersects with areas of distinctiveCommonwealth responsibilities.

Equality refers to the correlations between socialand economic inequalities and language. Theobvious issues are communication disabilitiessuch as deafness, lack of proficiency withstandard Australian English because the speakersuse either a dialectal form of English or anotherlanguage and, also, negative attitudes to varietiesof language which are different from the sociallyprestigious ones. Since clear patterns andrelationships between such language issues andsocial or economic inequalities are manifest inindicators like unemployment rates andinadequate standards of English, poor success inschooling, and Aboriginality the involvement ofthe Commonwealth is justified in languagepolicy making. For some individual members ofParliament, for some Ministers in Cabinet andfor some factional groupings in the politicalparties it was this broader social goal, thisdimension of the policy, which formed the basisfor discussions and which engaged their interestand support.

Economics refers to the promotion ofbilingualism for economic purposes, to thepromotion of the vocational implications ofsecond language learning, and to the economicvalue of Australia's expertise in teaching Englishto speakers of other languages. It has becomewidely accepted that it is in the national interestto address language questions seriously becauseof the relationship between the broad economic,specifically trading, directions of Australia andthe nation's available language resources. At acritical time in the debate on language policiesin Australia, this pragmatic, nationally self-interested dimension came to be shared bymany powerful political and economic figures,and hence, the prospects of successful advocacyimproved greatly.

Enrichment consists of the advocacy of secondlanguage learning for all on the basis of thetraditional arguments for second languageteaching: the cultural and intellectual benefits ofsuch learning, and the maintenance of languagesother than English in Australia.

External concerns Australia's role in its regionand in the world. This deals with foreign aid

1 0Making Multicultural Austral ia Making language policy: Australia’s experience

and technology transfer and the facilitation ofbilateral and multilateral relationships betweenAustralia and other countries.

The principles on which the policy and relatedprograms of action are based are as follows. Thefirst section of the policy (Lo Bianco, 1987)consists of a series of normative statementsabout the status of language in Australia. Thesebegin with a recognition of Australian Englishas the national, convenient and shared languageof Australia and its major official institutions.This is followed by a recognition of the rights touse community languages other than English;including the languages and language systems ofthe deaf and a recognition of the indigenousand unique status of Aboriginal languages,Torres Strait Islander languages and AustralianCreoles. Nonetheless, these statements do notcarry the force of law, nor could they. In theAustralian legal system, class action is eithercompletely absent or exists in only a restrictedway in some states. This, combined with theabsence of any legal position for English and theabsence of a Bill of Rights, greatly minimises theprospects that language questions could betaken into the legal arena as in the U.S.A.

The main section of the policy deals witheducation. Three principles underlie this:'English for All', 'Support for Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander Languages' and 'ALanguage Other than English for All'. 'Englishfor All' contains specifications for Englishmother tongue education for English-speakingAustralians, English as a Second Languageteaching and English as a Second Dialecteducation where this is required, and internaland external provisions of English as a ForeignLanguage teaching where this is required.

'Support for Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander Languages’1 entails elements ofbilingual and bicultural education for nativespeakers in all cases where this is possible. Itfurther involves language awareness programsand language learning programs for non-speakers of Aboriginal languages and theexpansion of descriptive linguistic work (e.g.recording and restoring).

'A Language Other than English for All' entailsthe teaching of community languages as part ofa larger aim of mother tongue maintenance forchildren of non-English speaking background,the teaching of community languages as secondlanguages to others for intercultural reasons andacademic development, the teaching oflanguages of geo-political and economicimportance to the nation, and the continuedteaching of 'enrichment' second languages forgeneral cultural and intellectual enrichmentpurposes.

In addition to language education policy thenational policy on languages deals with non-educational language issues such as the provisionof language services on an equitable andwidespread basis. Specifically, these servicesinclude library provisions for ESL/ESD; LOTEteaching for recreation/information and servicesfor the communication disabled.Interpreting/translating services (e.g. domesticprovisions for the deaf, for immigrants andAborigines) and external provisions forinterpreting and translating in trade anddiplomacy. A further language service is the useof the media to support the maintenance,learning and diffusion of languages. Ofparticular importance are the needs of thecommunication disabled, and speakers of smallor widely dispersed community languages. Afinal language service is that of language testing.This calls for the establishment of a service forproviding adequate, appropriate, fair and simpletesting of languages for educational, vocationaland other purposes.

The policy, completed at the end of November1986, was distributed by the CommonwealthMinister responsible for co-ordinating thegovernment response to the Senate's enquiry.Since the Australian states and territories havejurisdiction over education, their co-operation iscrucial for a truly national approach to languageplanning. Most welcomed the policy and statedthat they would co-operate in itsimplementation. This could be said to representa national consensus on languages issues.Nonetheless, opposition to some of its goals,especially the support for ethnic minority

1 1Making Multicultural Austral ia Making language policy: Australia’s experience

languages and Aboriginal languages, from somesections of the broader community should notbe underestimated.

The Commonwealth government has madefinancial allocations of $15.1m in 1987-88;$28m in 1988-89; $27.3m in 1989-90 and$23m in 1990-91 towards the implementationof the policy. In addition, an advisory councilcharged with a monitoring and evaluating rolehas now been set up to provide for the furtherdevelopment and modification of the policy.Generally speaking, federal financing is intendedto supplement existing state effort in thelanguages area or existing Commonwealthallocations to language programs. The nextsection describes the programs which have beenfunded by the Commonwealth.

Some programs are ongoing programs; othersare to be reviewed prior to decisions about theirlife expectancy being made. All programs aremeant to operate on the basis of co-operationbetween state, territory and non-governmentsystems with the Commonwealth. TheCommonwealth funds are intended to bematched, though not dollar for dollar, by theimplementing authority. The matching can beof 'effort', and not necessarily a financialcontribution. Given the severe financialstringency which has been in place at theCommonwealth level, the allocated amountsrepresent significant breakthroughs in manylanguage policy areas - particularly at a timewhen the financial stringency coincides with adevolution of responsibilities away from theCommonwealth in many areas of activity,particularly in education.

Expansion of the new arrivals component ofthe English as a second language program

The English as a second language program hasbeen expanded so that eligible students are ableto participate for up to twelve months inintensive English courses both in languagecentres prior to schooling, and in schools. Thelargest component, the 'general support'element of the ESL program which providesongoing support for students in schools, has not

been expanded. The net additional cost is$13.2m in 1988.

Australian second language learning program

This new program provides funding to State,Territory and non-government schoolauthorities for innovative and high qualityprojects of national relevance in languages otherthan English, reflecting a balance between alllanguages. These include community languages(e.g. Greek, Turkish or Vietnamese), languagesof economic and geo-political importance (e.g.Arabic, Mandarin or Japanese), languages taughtas part of mother tongue maintenance programsfor non-English speaking background children,and those taught as second languages. The netadditional cost is $7.44m for each of threeyears, as both a supplement for existingprograms and for new programs. A nationalcomponent for this program has also beenfunded.

The adult literacy action campaign

This consists of the implementation through theCommonwealth authorities of a two-yearcampaign to improve levels of adult literacy.This will include publicity on the need forliteracy and existing tutoring and courses,curriculum and materials development, researchand, of course, program provision and teaching.The total program cost is $3.93m but otherfunds of approximately $2m may be diverted tothis activity.

Initiatives in Asian studies

This is the first Commonwealth program of thistype. Its aim is to boost Asian studies inAustralia, including, for example, initiatives todevelop curriculum materials for schoolteaching and establish centres in tertiaryinstitutions for research and teaching. Theprogram will make available funding to promotethe learning of Asian languages of economic andgeo-political importance to Australia such asIndonesian, Japanese and Korean. The netadditional cost will be $1.95m per annum.

1 2Making Multicultural Australia Making language policy: Australia’s experience

Cross-cultural training programs

This program is intended to boost multiculturaland intercultural studies in tertiary educationinstitutions and post-school accreditededucational authorities. Funds will be offered toinitiate or extend existing courses in cross-cultural attitudinal training and communitylanguages, to develop curriculum materials forteaching such courses, and to include cross-cultural awareness content in a wide range ofprofessional and para-professional courses. Theprogram will target professional and para-professional training to enhance the quality ofservice delivery to Aboriginal and ethniccommunity populations. The net additional costwill be $1.5m.

The National Aboriginal Languages Program

This is the first Commonwealth program whoseexpress goal is to assist in the maintenance ofAboriginal languages since the Commonwealthceded jurisdiction on education to the NorthernTerritory government. It will providesupplementary funding to State, Territory andnon-government authorities for initiatives inAboriginal languages, including bilingualeducation programs, literature production,language maintenance and language awarenessprograms. The net additional full-year programcost is $0.5m in the first year and $1.0m in thefollowing years.

Language testing unit

Although it had been decided to set up such aunit, this is now to be reviewed. The unit was toattend to the co-ordination and development ofAustralian tests of English for academic,occupational and other purposes and to reviewthe language testing done by a wide range ofofficial bodies in both English and languagesother than English. It was intended torationalise the existing language testingfunctions of various departments, including theCouncil on Overseas ProfessionalQualifications. Funding beyond 1988-89 was tobe conditional on the Unit's full or partialrecovery of its operating costs. The net

additional full-year program cost which wasallocated was $0.25m per annum. The currentreview of this item will delay anyimplementation for the time being.

Australian Advisory Council on Languages andMulticultural Education

The purpose of AACLAME is to monitor thedevelopment and implementation of theNational Policy on Languages, to develop itfurther, and to address language andmulticultural education issues generally.

The Process and Stages

Australia seems to have arrived at a delicatetruce - a consensual stage - in resolving theinterest-laden bases of language advocacy. Theprocess of arriving at this position was complexand intriguing. It appears to have taken onlyabout a decade and a half. Within the presentconsensus, however, is at least one issue whichthreatens to render it asunder. Prior todescribing this situation I will describe theprocess of evolution and behaviour of thelanguage constituency in social psychologicaland socio-political terms. This is an attempt toabstract from the practice of contested languagepolicy making in Australia during the late 1970sand early to mid-1980s. What follows derivesfrom my participation in and observation of theprocess. My position is influenced by thetheories on intergroup relations (Tajfel, 1982;Taylor & Moghaddam, 1987). It is expressed ingeneral theoretical terms in an attempt to findsome generalisable validity in Australia'sexperience during this time. The following fourstages were traversed.

(1) Consciousness of group identity aslanguage-determined or language-specificderiving from felt language 'problems'.This process involved the gradualinternal definition by ethnic,Aboriginal and other groups (e.g. thedeaf) of language as a salient, if not theexclusive, defining characteristic of thegroup. This, like most group identityformation, emerges from a process of


examination by the group of itsboundaries with 'outgroups',particularly with those which arerelevant and dominant. The contrastwhich emerged from this comparisonwas one which gave prominence tolinguistic characteristics as the 'content'of the ingroup; different languageswere seen as representative of theboundaries between different groups.This self-understanding emerged inmany groups, especially ethnic andAboriginal ones, at approximately thesame time. Individually it impelledeach to identify self-interestedadvocacy of redress through variousactivities. This in turn involved thetransfer of private language basedproblems to public issues which wereclaimed to require servicing.

This transference is never fully resolved withinthe group, because advocacy of an internal issuefor public responsibility usually generates anopposite reaction from within the group for'authenticity', for the group to retain'ownership' of the language issue. The criticalfactors which move most groups to agitation forpublic intervention are:

(a) the perception of the attrition of thelanguage, and/or

(b) the correlation between groupmembership status and socio-economicdisadvantage which derives from alinguistic mismatch between the groupand its language, on the one hand, andthe dominant language code of thelarger society on the other.

This must initially be accompanied by at leastpartial exclusion by the powerful outgroupwhich makes wholesale assimilation undesirableor, at least, temporarily difficult.

Initially, the group targets itself. For instance,teachers advocate that the members need to bemore vigilant in preserving the language orenhancing its status; newspapers carry letters

from vigilant members of the community thatthe children are abandoning the language;parents admonish the children for replying tothem only in English. Ultimately this leads toexternal advocacy, for example, the demand forinterpreting/translating services, governmentaland public recognition and legitimacy, andforms of bilingual education or other teachingof the language.

There are usually two dimensions involved indescribing the way groups advocate their claims- those of power and morality - though these arenever far apart. The first involves generating asufficiently strong internal group coherence withstrongly marked boundaries between the groupand outgroups recognised as such by the power-holding group. The group's perceived strengthderives either from its size, or the positions andresources it holds and can mobilise from itsstrategic locations. Having established power, itis in a position to bargain. The second involvesappealing to the moral sympathy of members ofthe dominant group. This requires a perceptionfrom the ingroup that the outgroup ispredisposed to responding to such appeals;hence, evidence is presented to evoke sympathy(e.g. problems, family breakdown, disadvantage,irreparable cultural damage). Both strategiesrequire recognition by the dominant outgroup,but often internally as well. To achieve this thegroup usually evolves a rhetoric of 'rights' basedeither on inherent rights which transcendconsiderations of polity (i.e. human rights) or'earned' rights, those which derive from thecontribution the group's members have made tothe well-being of the society.

Both strategies tend to be determined by leadersfrom the ingroup; those who mediate betweentheir own group and the powerholding groupand tend to define the relationships betweenthem. In both cases a range of possible responsesexist by the powerholders, from 'porkbarrelling', co-option of leaders, rejection andpolarization, to the creation of 'alliances' basedon 'clientelism' and mutual dependence. Morepositive responses are possible but these seem torequire a judgement from the powerholdingoutgroup of the validity of the claims, and the


perception that it can benefit by conceding, atleast partially, to the claims.

(2) These processes and behaviours requirethe identification and demonstrableexistence of language 'problems'. Thesecond phase in the Australianexperience emerged from thegeneralisation of these problemsbeyond single self-interested groups to'issues' sufficiently well focused toallow the specific groups to perceiveindividual benefit in adhering to abroader constituency - but sufficientlybroad issues to constitute a claim thatcould be put to the powerholdingauthorities uniting otherwise disparateseparatist claims. This process wascomplex and difficult. It required theabandonment of many of the separatistclaims in exchange for the achievementof a broader alliance built on the issueswhich all groups could deduce asflowing logically from their privateclaims. The prerequisites involved atleast a perception of the commonnessof the claims; a small or negligibledegree of success as individual groupsacting on their own: the perception ofthemselves as unlikely on their own tomodify their relatively powerlessposition or to extract sufficientsympathy from powerholders; aminimisation of the compradourtendencies of any or each group or atleast the key ones (i.e. 'holding theranks').

Invariably the evolution of a broaderconstituency requires the creation of a newpublic, political discourse to describe the new,larger, united ingroup. First, it directs this newself-description to itself to enable a new self-description to be accepted by all the membersand second, this new self-description ispresented to the outgroup. This discourseseemed to require a rhetoric of 'national interest'and good citizenship. This seeks to reassure thepowerful outgroup that the lobby is'responsible', that it is concerned for the well-

being and cohesion of the polity and that itsadvocacy and claims are consistent with thewell-being of the polity. At the same time, theexpanded ingroup will, very clearly, demonstrateits size, power and cohesion as an indicator bothto itself and the powerholders of the relativestrengths involved and to calculate the relativepower distribution in the relationship.

In addition to its power it will publicly andobviously 'carry' the least powerful groups. Thepurpose of this appears to be to demonstrate themoral basis of the claims it is making. Thisinvolves carrying whole groups while protestingnot to speak 'for' any single group (avoidingpaternalism) but, to some extent, doing sonevertheless (claiming moral virtue). Sometimesthis means 'presenting' evidence of disadvantage(family distress, discrimination, suffering). Theother crucial feature is the early evolution of acomposite log of claims. This is a vital processfor bolstering internal cohesion and reinforcingto each constituent group the value of belonging(democratic decision making, 'gettingsomewhere'). It is also very important externallyin that it unites the many problems into 'a case'which authorities/bureaucracies can deal withefficiently. This log usually is both specific andgeneral. It will contain the discourse of the'overall good', the 'national interest', and it willminimise the appearance of 'self-seekingness'. Inaddition the log will probably include theprinciples which underlie the separatist claims,extracting these from their specificmanifestation as claims on the public purse andseeking that these be adopted as a guiding set ofprinciples by the authorities.

(3) Contact between representatives of bothgroups. A third phase involves contactbetween the leaders or representativesof the lobby and the powerholdingoutgroup. This is a crucial stage sincethe lobby must delegate authority,always previously affirmed to restindissolubly in the ordinary, 'voiceless'members. It is likely that attempts atco-option, defusing the growth of themovement, will occur at this time.Further, the system may wish to


establish a compradour class amongthe lobbyists. Matters become morepublic - the authorities are asked bythe media to 'respond', to 'react'. Atthis stage, the initiative is held by theconstituency, which now strives toperfect a series of key words or themesin the evolving political discourse.These will stress language issues, notindividual languages; the group willparade 'cases' of individual absurdity:of trade deals lost due to poorlinguistic preparation by the nation, ofintellectual and cultural benefitsforgone. This will all be specific, ofcourse, to the nation's self-perception.If it perceives itself as successful andmodern, then the discourse will arguethat language policy change is acorrelate of this. If its great traditionsare salient in the national self-consciousness, then heritage andconnection with the great ideas of thepast will be stressed. If it is seeking todevelop, to become a successfulmodern society then language issuespertinent to this will be the flag bearersof the language constituencies' publiccase.

The critical issue for the constituencyis its cohesion. Its breadth needs to besufficiently wide to enable individualgroups to continue to attach specificproblem-related aspirations to theirmembership of the lobby and to havetheir ordinary members perceive this.It also needs to encompass breadthenough to make 'pork barrelling'difficult. The discourse, then, involvesa tension between localized interestsand the broader case. Reconciling theseis more difficult when entering open-ended dialogue with a powerfulresource holding outgroup, than whenengaging in a relatively closed internalmonologue. The former tends towardspracticalities, compromises, deals andbargaining, conceding and gaining.The latter tends towards purist

positions. The constituency starts tointroduce caveats and escape clauses inits log. It will tell the outgroup thatalthough it is united there are different'perspectives', 'affinity groups','streams', 'schools of thought' - alleuphemisms for factions. It may beoffered places on working parties,steering groups, committees,consultancy selection groups. Theselection of these representatives isinvariably difficult. A tension betweenthe technical expertise which thebureaucracy will demand and the'authenticity' and 'representativeness'demanded by the groups may be acute.Constant gravitating between these twois likely but, with good leadership,progress can be made.

(4) Characterising the outcome. When apolicy is agreed - a compromisereached, a result obtained - all groupsseek to own it. It may be characterisedby the same group in different waysdepending on the audience it isaddressing. The lobbies will claim avictory for their power, a concession totheir moral rightness. The authoritieswill claim to have made a responsibledeal with the lobbies and to haveresponded to their claims by 'ensuring'that national interests were keptparamount.

The adoption of the National Policy onLanguages in Australia has evolved throughprocesses similar to those described above. Thegroups involved in achieving this result havemaintained internal cohesion. In the last yearlanguage issues have been prominent in themedia, particularly focusing on economic (tradeand tourism) needs which Australia has in keyAsian languages: Chinese, Japanese, and to alesser extent, Indonesian. Recent politicalchanges have made the media attention a sourceof great tension as far as the languageconstituency is concerned. The present tension,which may well worsen, is between two keygroups. The following characterisation contains


both the self-definition of the group's coreadherents and the attributed definition by itsopposing group. For the sake of making thepoints both simple and clear, the following is aslight oversimplification of the reality. Forpurposes of argument, I will label the first groupthe 'Anglo-Asianists' and the second group the'Community Language - MulticulturalismAdvocates'.

The former group caricatures the latter as beingoverly concerned with, 'obsessed by', 'useless'languages, atavism and naive rationales. Theyaccuse them, at their most extreme, of ignoringAustralia's 'real' language needs, ofsubordinating national interests to sectarianones. At the same time, the latter groupcaricatures the former as being ignorant of whatwill motivate students to become bilingual, ofbeing ignorant of schools and theircommunities, of exaggerating the relationshipbetween economics and languages, ofunderestimating the usefulness of English andits position of strength as a lingua franca, in Asiain particular. At their worst they accuse them ofnot 'trusting' Asian-Australians who, by thecommunity language thrust, would 'inevitably'be more proficient speakers of the so-called keylanguages than would Anglo-Australians.

The Asianists have the dominant position atpresent. A reflection of their position is theextent to which they control the language of thedebate. The term 'community languages', whichin the early 1970s was used in contradistinctionto modern and foreign languages to connotegreater immediacy and relevance, is nowcharacterised as parochial, limited and domestic.Asian languages (really only Chinese andJapanese with Indonesian a long way behind)were labelled originally by their supporters 'key'languages, and then relabelled 'national interest'languages. As the debates became morecontested more belligerent labels wereemployed: 'strategic' languages was popular for atime. The belligerence has given way to anuneasy truce, but preparations for battlecontinue, manifest in an increasingmilitarisation of the language for arguing aboutlanguage. The Anglo-Asianists now speak of

'front-line' languages - the communitylanguages advocates talk of 'holding the line'with the major community languages('rearguard languages'). The stakes are thedistribution of the existing allocations ofresources and the deployment of any new ormarginal resources.

The Community Languages - Multiculturalismgroup, although its largest components wouldbe southern Europeans, is led by north and eastEuropeans. The group contains, of course, manyAsian communities.

They are not usually the same as thoseconsidered most economically important; theywould include Vietnamese, Cantonese, Hokkienand Hakka Chinese, Laotian and Kampucheanspeakers. This places these groups in asomewhat ambiguous relationship overall, butusually they have adhered to communitylanguage justifications and rationales.

ESL is the central issue which has generatedconsensus among community languages groups.This is despite the fact that for the largestgroups, the southern and northern Europeans,this is scarcely a relevant consideration sincethey are now enrolling their third generation,which is largely English-speaking, in schools.This group seems to have more supportersamong the language professionals: linguists,applied linguists and language teachers,although many of these are associated with the'traditional' languages of the curriculum,especially French, which in the past has beenrepudiated by both of the key groups mentionedabove. The first group is supported by businessand government. The second group is perceivedby government to be a strong electoralconstituency.

We must surmise that unless significantconcessions can be made by both groups to theinterests and needs of the other, the successfullanguage constituency may evaporate. Unlikethe U.S.A., where the status of English hasemerged as the major issue in debates aboutbilingual education (Marshall, 1986), the onlyconflict which seems likely to emerge in


Australia in English language education (apartfrom hardy perennials like the 'standards'debate) is the question of the relative priority tobe accorded to English as a second languageteaching as against the new economically moreattractive English as a foreign language teaching.The latter is now regarded as a major potentialexport income earner for Australia.

Many of the elements of the tension describedabove are present in this emerging issue also.

Problems and Prospects

The Senate concluded its inquiry by declaringthat a national - as distinct from aCommonwealth - approach to planning actionon language matters was not only justified butnecessary. Language policy making which dealswith status attribution is not usually undertakenby or entrusted to linguists. This is a reflectionof a political perception that language haspowerful symbolic importance and groupidentity functions beyond its more obviouscommunicative functions and that, as aconsequence the contested, disputed interests ofdifferent social groups are inextricably bound upwith language issues. Policy making is not,therefore, a technical application of formulae,but rather one of negotiating consensus, ofhaggling out workable agreements about desiredoutcomes on language questions. Australia'slanguages policy has come about this way. Aquick consideration of the following list of whatmay be called 'language problems' in Australiashould be ample demonstration that policy ispolitical and that, therefore, policy involvesmaking choices. These choices are often betweenequally morally defensible claims and needs,balanced against economically imposedstringencies.

Some of these language problems are:

(a) Almost half of Australian students ofmigrant background who need extrahelp and instruction in English atschool do not receive any suchinstruction. There are serious gaps inboth the adequacy and appropriateness

of much of the ESL provision for non-English speaking backgroundAustralian students. The mostcomprehensive studies undertaken ofESL provision in schools, theCampbell reports, attest to a seriousinadequacy in the level of provision.They estimate that an increase of up to30% of resources is justified and thatthere exist serious deficiencies in theESL effort. Since the Campbellcalculations the ESL program was cutsharply in the 1986 budget, thusfurther damaging the level of provision(Campbell et al., 1984, 1985a, b).

(b) Although in the U.S.A. deaf peoplecan study to Ph.D. level in AmericanSign Language, it is extremely difficultfor deaf Australians to study and attainqualifications in Australian highereducation institutions.

(c) The rate of extinction of Aboriginallanguages is over one per year and onlya handful of the over 50 still spokenmay be spoken by children in the year2000.

(d) There is a consistent pattern oflanguage shift among immigrantbackground Australians who learn anon-English language at home awayfrom their mother tongue to usingEnglish all the time. This is despite thenot insignificant successes in havingcommunity language bilingual andimmersion second language programsintroduced in primary schools.

(e) Australia's interpreting and translatingprovisions are inadequate andstretched. Although in recent yearscommunity interpreting has been themain planning emphasis, theprovisions of interpreters andtranslators are inadequately and poorlyused. There is virtually no high levelaccreditation provision (levels four andfive of the National Accreditation


Authority for Translators andInterpreters) in languages of keyeconomic significance and poorprovisions for Aborigines and the deaf.

(f ) Well over 300,000 Australians ofimmigrant non-English speakingbackground speak English poorly tovery poorly. The majority of those ofwork force age occupy jobs inindustries undergoing the greatestdegree of employment dislocation andattrition due to economicrestructuring. The retraining of theseworkers, not to mention theireconomic and social prospectsgenerally, is severely constrained bytheir inadequate proficiency instandard English.

(g) Over 3.7% of Australians, i.e. English-speaking background Australians, arefunctionally illiterate in English; amuch higher percentage has onlyrudimentary reading skills and, whenwritten skills are included, theproportion increases dramatically.Social class correlations are strong. Thismeans that almost one millionAustralian adults have problems withEnglish literacy. In its recent study inVictoria, the Victorian Adult Literacyand Basic Education Council(VALBEC, 1987) calculated that about430,000 adults - migrants and others -require literacy help but only 4,000receive tuition. Clearly, in addition tobeing an issue of individual socialjustice, adult illiteracy also carriessignificant economic and social costs tothe country. In Victoria well over 80%of adult literacy students who work areemployed in unskilled and semi-skilledjobs. Such jobs account for only 33%of all jobs - a proportion which isdeclining (VALBEC, 1987).

(h) Although only 7% of Australianundergraduate students were enrolledin language courses in 1982, and

overall some 30 languages are taught,three languages attract 60% ofstudents.

(i) Whereas over 44% of Australianstudents completed the Higher SchoolCertificate - the pre-tertiary school year- with a second language in 1967, thatfigure had dropped to a nationalaverage of about 10% by 1986. This isparticularly acute when therecommendations of the EconomicPlanning Advisory Committee (1986)are considered. EPAC argued thatAustralia must move away fromdependence on extractable goods andagriculture products in its exports, andgreatly improve its export ofmanufactured goods. It argued thatAustralia as an exporting nation mustselect and create niches in theeconomies of its trading partners andtarget goods at these. Inevitably thiswould require a much moresophisticated knowledge of thesesocieties, and linguistic and culturalcompetence beyond present levels.Such instrumental reasons strengthentraditional 'cultural enrichment'arguments for lamenting such a seriousdecline in second language learning.

(j) Despite the potentially enormousimpact which communications andinformation technology will have onliteracy genres and skills, practically noserious attention has been paid toexamining the implications of thesechanges for education and particularlyfor teaching.

It is around such issues, perceived and felt bythe particular communities concerned in eachcase as 'problems', that the advocacy forlanguage policy commenced and the processesdescribed above took place. Despite theadoption of a National Policy on Languages,severe deficiencies remain in Australia's responseto the pressing issues of language. It isimportant that permanent structures for


overseeing language planning be set up.

A body entrusted by legislation with theauthority to examine linguistic/technical aspectsof language planning, especially in the case ofAboriginal languages, is an important goal.Although such a body -perhaps a NationalInstitute of Languages - would be regarded bymany as 'institutionalising' the issues, it couldbe constructed in such a way as to berepresentative of different interests. One of theurgent tasks of such a body would be to tacklethe standardisation of existing orthographies,teacher training for Aboriginal bilinguals andliterature production. These are essential if thereis to be any prospect of producing significantlong term curriculum improvements in theteaching of Aboriginal languages. Much of thismust be done locally with Aboriginalmanagement of the decision making, but sometasks can and ought to be done nationally.

Furthermore, for the languages policy overall itis also essential that an ongoing evaluationmechanism be set in place. The purpose wouldbe to monitor, review and improve practice andto refine the work in this area continuously.Investigating ways of exploiting moderntechnologies for distance teaching andorganisational variety to provide languagemaintenance in community languages is also agreat need. Many schools in Melbourne andSydney enroll speakers of over 30 languages andthe total number of ethnic communitylanguages is over 100. Inevitably such numbersof languages present practical, organisationaland resource problems to planning mothertongue teaching provisions.

Conclusion

This paper has attempted to provide adescription not merely of Australia's policy onlanguages but also of some of the moreimportant social processes involved inproducing it. It has also attempted to considerdistinctive Australian language needs and someof the deficiencies of the present policyframework. This concluding section addressesthe role of policy makers in developing language

policy in complex multilingual societies likeAustralia.

It is the responsibility of policy makers toextricate themselves from the interest-basedlobbies, generalising from specific instances,principles which meet four key criteria:

(1) Those which can be defended andsustained intellectually (e.g. by takingaccount of sociolinguistic evidenceabout the role of schooling in languagemaintenance or revival efforts, bygathering evidence about howproficiency in second languages isgained, by examining resourceconfigurations which are reasonable tothe goals of programs).

(2) Those which are feasible in terms of afair measure of realistic or probableallocations of resources (e.g. settingrealistic, attainable goals;acknowledging the jurisdictional rolesof different bodies; explicitly statingthe basis for the selection of optionsfor the choices made; matchingreasonable resource configurations tothe meeting of goals of particularprograms).

(3) Those which are both humanitarianand just in the context of democraticsocieties promoting equity in thebroader society for minorities (e.g.ensuring that due consultativeprocesses are engaged in; being ascomprehensive as possible about theneeds, rights and demands ofdisadvantaged groups).

(4) Those which are efficient andachievable in consideration of thenational interest, which address thelinguistic needs and opportunities ofthe mainstream sections of the society.

These principles involve the reconciliation ofneeds, demands and interests which areperceived to be national and those which are


perceived to be important by the community. Itis extremely important that an explicitlyprincipled way of doing this is constructed sothat through later refinement, changes can bemade. It is also important that the valuepositions of the policy makers be stated. Policiesneed also to be practical and politically wise;attainable goals should be set; evaluationmechanisms and processes set in train. Actionsshould be embedded in existing structures wherethis is possible and proper account needs to betaken of minority/majority power positions,symbolic acts and practical tasks.

Some of these have occurred in the Australianexperience - others have not. The setting up of arepresentative Advisory Council may ensure thatthe strengths of the present policy positions arereinforced, that the gaps and deficiencies arecorrected, and that further refinements anddevelopments take place regularly.

Note

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languageshave, for the sake of brevity, been referred to asAboriginal languages.

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