WP63 Policy, policing & the ecology of social norms: Ethnographic monitoring revisited

Ethnography and Language Policy represents an attempt towards paradigmatic change in the study of language policy. The attempt ? characterized by the editor in terms of Hymes? ?ethnographic monitoring? ? consists of a series of shifts in objects, assumptions and methodologies. Policy research consists of work on a variety of distributed objects, organized along different scales and operating on a variety of levels and in a variety of modes. This review article organizes these shifts along three axes: (a) understanding language policies as ideological complexes; (b) incorporating history and globalization as crucial ?contexts?, enabling a different kind of generalization about dynamic systems; and (c) the introduction of vertical processes of stratification and layering alongside horizontal processes of distribution and presence. Taken together, these shifts offer a new program for ethnographic monitoring.