While globalisation, mobility, and social inclusion have propitiated the most fruitful period for language policy-making in history, the study of the processes of formulation of language policies has been widely neglected by applied linguists (Lo Bianco, 2013). With this state of affairs in mind, our research project aims to explore two stages – policy formulation, and decision making – of the policy-making process of Languages Connect - Ireland's Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education 2017-2026.
In this paper we aim to explore how the interactive processes of ideational power operate in an institutional context. We adopt a discursive institutionalism framework, which is an agency-oriented approach to the interaction between policy actors in wielding ideational power (Schmidt, 2008). Drawing on the framework of ´ideational power´ (Carstensen & Schmidt, 2016), we examine how ideas about language policy are generated, deliberated, and adopted among policy and political actors. More precisely, we focus on the way agents wield the meaning of policy ideas and the way power relations are manifested behind argumentative struggles.
In the presentation we contextualise our study and outline the results of a previous research on the participatory process to Languages Connect, in which we found a mismatch between the submissions to the consultation and the final policy outcome (Erdocia, Nocchi & Ruane, 2020). Adopting a discourse analysis approach, we present the data from policy documents and interviews with seven language experts and civil servants involved in the process leading to the drafting of the policy. Our findings indicate that agents are dependent on existing ideational structures to develop and defend their ideas. We show how ideational structures exert constraints on ideational agency.
Carstensen, M. B., & Schmidt, V. A. (2016). Power through, over and in ideas: conceptualizing ideational power in discursive institutionalism. Journal of European public policy, 23(3): 318-337.
Erdocia, I., Nocchi, S., & Ruane, M. (2020). Language policy-making in Ireland: A preliminary study of the consultation process of Languages Connect. TEANGA, the Journal of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, 27: 98-127.
Lo Bianco, J. (2013). Role of Deliberation in Language Policy and Planning. In C. Chapelle (Ed.). The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (pp. 5004-5008). Oxford: Blackwell.
Schmidt, V. A. (2008). Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci., 11: 303-326.
