Policy recommendations for language learning: Linguists’ contributions between scholarly debates and pseudoscience

Abstract

Some language-acquisition researchers not only pursue their scholarly agenda but also act outside academia as experts in language policy-making. However, the relationship between scholarly quality and political impact is complicated, and oftentimes policy is not based on robust scholarly evidence. In this contribution, I focus on research findings in language learning that have been taken up in language planning and policy (e.g., the notion of linguistic interdependence). Drawing on concrete cases, I discuss problems of individual expertise and quality of research. Where there are methodological inadequacies and/or lack of expertise, problematic or even utterly false conclusions can be drawn from research. A critical review of influential claims in the field of applied linguistics with respect to robustness of the evidence and its fit to the actual policy problem should allow us to determine which theories and research strands may be useful for language-policy recommendations and which are probably not. A critical review of linguists' involvement in policy-making suggests that often a more appropriate appellation for so-called evidencebased policy would be policy-based evidence. In my discussion, I address two delimitation problems: defining the boundary between pseudoscience and real science (in the wide sense of the term, including social sciences and humanities) and defining the boundary between scholarly rigor and political advocacy by academics.

The Extraordinary Ordinary: Re‐engineering Multilingualism as a Natural Category

“…(The Douglas Fir Group, 2016, p. 38) There is ample research on language ideologies. Scholars have focused on the folk's ideas on languages (Niedzielski & Preston, 1999), on how representations of speech styles relate to social and ethnic differentiations (Irvine & Gal, 2000), on how ideologies shape language policy discourse (Duchêne, 2008), and also on how ideologies and values influence the generation and application of research findings in second language (SLA) as well as in bilingualism and multilingualism research (Berthele, 2019). Lastly, language ideologies also play a role in shaping the way disciplines carve up the field of scholarly inquiry (Gal & Irvine, 1995).…”

The challenges of providing expert advice in policy contexts

“…Where research was available, we did not have that information at hand in real time (Case 1). As Berthele (2019) argues, applied linguists who act as experts in language policy-making situations need to be aware of their own ignorance and personal biases to ensure that advice that is provided is not based on an insufficient research base, 'bad science, vague theories and studies biased towards confirming our beliefs' (p.8). It is of course also important to make the point that policy questions/problems are generally much broader than research questions in academic work, so even a relevant line of research is not necessarily adequate as a basis for advice on real, practical policy matters.…”