Minority Language Policy and Planning in the Micro Context of the City: The Case of Manchester

Abstract

This paper investigates service provisions in community languages offered by Manchester City Council and agencies working alongside to find out whether there is an explicit language policy in Manchester, how such a policy is formulated, how it functions, and how it is reflected in education. Data was collected through interviews with different personnel in MCC, focus group discussions with community language speakers, and the websites of various government agencies. The results show that there is an implicit rather than explicit language policy in Manchester. There exists also a language hierarchy in Manchester’s language policy whereby some community languages are given precedence over others, depending on the numerical strength of speakers. The results also show that there is usually a sort of articulation between the micro and macro-levels of language policy in multilingual contexts, which is evident in Manchester, particularly in the role that supplementary schools play in filling the gap in teaching community languages in mainstream schools.

Keywords

• implicit policies
• explicit policies
• educational hierarchy
• mainstream schools
• supplementary schools