CIP seminar with Francis M. Hult

Front Stage and Back Stage: Entextualizing Individuals in the Institutional Context of Language Policy

Abstract
The United Nations (UN) has aspired to multilingualism throughout its history, identifying six official languages for this unique intergovernmental organization designed to facilitate multilateralism and peace (UN, 2023).  Like many multinational organizations, it has also struggled with the practical challenges of realizing its multilingual aspirations and resisting the dominance of a single language (McEntee-Atalianis, 2022). 

For the UN, the stakes are high because multilingual practice is essential to democratic engagement and equity among member states in negotiations as well as vital for external relations such as peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, refugee resettlement, among other areas.  Over the past decade there has been increasingly concerted attention at the UN to identifying institutional challenges to multilingualism and planning for language management.

In this talk, part of a larger project documenting multilingualism at the UN, I report on joint research with Lisa McEntee-Atalianis in which we map the discursive trajectory of this renewed attention to language management, drawing upon methodological foundations of discursive approaches to language policy (e.g., Barakos & Unger, 2016; Hult, 2015, Johnson, 2011) and interpretive policy analysis (e.g., Moore & Wiley, 2015).  The talk focuses on what policy actors and expectations about their roles are entextualized in UN policy documents.  Data were collected from digital UN archives, specifically successive investigations about multilingualism by the UN’s Joint Inspection Unit, multilingualism resolutions by the UN General Assembly, and reports on multilingualism by the Secretary-General.  These policy data were analyzed using abductive qualitative coding (Kennedy & Thornberg, 2018).  Findings show increased specificity in attention to the management of financial and human resources as well as shifting roles for UN staff members or what Spolsky (2023) distinguishes as advocates and managers who have differing degrees of agency in social change and policy implementation.

Francis M. Hult is Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).  He has published widely on language policy and planning, with books including Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning (with Johnson) and Language Policy and Language Acquisition Planning (with Siiner and Kupisch).  Professor Hult is the manager of the Language Policy (LgPolicy) listserv.  He also serves on the editorial boards of Language Policy, Current Issues in Language Planning, and Language Problems and Language Planning, among several other journals, as well as on the boards of the Language Policy Research Network (LPReN) and the Center for Applied Linguistics.  

Please note: Registration is not required but seats are limited.