Bridging Policy Gaps: The Case for Ethnographic Methods in Language Policy and Planning Research

This review paper argues for ethnographic data collection method for language policy and planning (henceforth, LPP) research because by using such method researchers can identify potential policy and practice gaps. As a result, researchers could voice the local perspectives and such perspectives might be incorporated in the policy making in their relevant context/countries. To achieve this, some LPP studies which have used the most popular data collection methods including policy documents, survey instruments and interview protocol and ethnographic research methods are analyzed. Policy documents are an important source of data which provide insight into one of the aspects of language policy, that is, macro/explicit/declared/aspects of language policy. However, it does not shed light into the micro aspects (i.e., teachers’/students’ beliefs about languages and subsequent practices, and the impact of macro aspects of policy processes on the individual members of a given speech community) of language policy processes. The survey instruments provide respondents’ self-reported preferences, and attitudes towards language(s); however, the data obtained may not reflect what the respondents actually practice. Interview data may provide rich insight into some of the important aspects of language policy, that is to say the conceptual aspects (i.e., participants’ beliefs, attitudes, and preference towards languages). Consequently, to gain holistic insight into language policy processes, the interview data may need to be supplemented with explicit aspects of language policy processes of a given context, such as language policy documents, educational policies, constitutional documents, and so on. I hope this analysis may help novice researchers to select appropriate data collection methods.