WP194 Security & language policy.

This paper draws critical security studies into the investigation of language policy for two reasons.? First, critical security studies provides informative commentary on how ?security? is now being reconfigured, with developments in digital technology, large-scale population movements, and the privatisation of public services.? Second, it is increasingly attentive to how geopolitics permeates the everyday.? This generates considerable scope for connection with research on language in society, and this paper provides two case studies of how ?enemy? and ?fear? have been active principles in language policy development.? The first shows how security has become an increasingly influential theme in the UK, and focusing on Cyprus, the second describes how legacies of large-scale violent conflict can generate rather unexpected ground-level enactments of language education policy.