Tracing applied linguists’ interests in language policy and planning (LPP) as reflected in the pages of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics since its founding in 1980, I focus on the emergence of, and current boom in, ethnographic LPP research. I draw on the ethnographic concept of ideological and implementational LPP spaces as scalar, layered policies and practices influencing each other, mutually reinforcing, wedging, and transforming ideology through implementation and vice versa. Doing so highlights how the perennial policy-practice gap is given nuance through exploration of the intertwining dynamics of top-down/bottom-up language planning activities and processes, monoglossic/heteroglossic language ideologies and practices, potential equality/actual inequality of languages, and critical/transformative research paradigms in LPP.

A decade ago, Hornberger & Johnson proposed that the ethnography of language planning and policy (ELPP) offers a useful way to understand how people create, interpret, and at times resist language policy and planning (LPP). They envisioned ethnographic investigation of layered LPP ideological and implementational spaces, taking up Hornberger's plea five years earlier for language users, educators, and researchers to fill up and wedge open ideological and implementational spaces for multiple languages, literacies, identities, and practices to flourish and grow rather than dwindle and disappear. With roots going back to the 1980s and 1990s, ethnographic research in LPP had been gathering momentum since the turn of the millennium. This review encompasses selected ethnographic LPP research since 2000, exploring affordances and constraints of this research in yielding comparative and cumulative findings on how people interpret and engage with LPP initiatives. We highlight how common-sense wisdom about the perennial gap between policy and practice is given nuance through ethnographic research that identifies and explores intertwining dynamics of top-down and bottom-up LPP activities and processes, monoglossic and heteroglossic language ideologies and practices, potential equality and actual inequality of languages, and critical and transformative LPP research paradigms.

Exploring contemporary Aymara and Quechua speakers' engagements with multilingualism, this article examines two transnational sites of Indigenous language use in Bolivia—a master's program in bilingual intercultural education in Cochabamba and a hip hop collective in El Alto. Responding to the call for a sociolinguistics of globalization that describes and interprets mobile linguistic resources, speakers, and markets, we draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork to explore the transnational nature of these mobile and globalized sites, ideologies of Indigenous language and identity present there, and flexible language practices therein. From our analysis of selected narratives and interactions observed and recorded between 2004 and 2009, we argue that these sites, ideologies, and language practices constitute productive spaces for Indigenous language speakers to intervene in a historically and enduringly unequal, globalizing world. (Indigeneity, mobility, translanguaging, flexible language practices, multilingual repertoire, global hip hop)*

Although multilingualism and multilingual education have existed for centuries, our 21st-century entrance into the new millennium has brought renewed interest and contestation around this educational alternative. Ethnolinguistic diversity and inequality, intercultural communication and contact, and global political and economic interdependence are more than ever acknowledged realities of today's world, and all of them put pressures on our educational systems. Now, as throughout history, multilingual education offers the best possibilities for preparing coming generations to participate in constructing more just and democratic societies in our globalized and intercultural world; however, it is not unproblematically achieved. There are many unanswered questions and doubts as to policy and implementation, program and curricular design, classroom instruction practices, pedagogy, and teacher professional development, but there is also much that we understand and know very well, based on empirical research in many corners of the world. Here I highlight Bolivian and other Indigenous educational experiences with which I am most familiar, and which capture certainties that hold beyond the particular instances I describe. My emphasis is on what we know and are sure of, and my goal is to convey my deep conviction that multilingual education constitutes a wide and welcoming educational doorway toward peaceful coexistence of peoples and especially restoration and empowerment of those who have been historically oppressed.

South America, widely known as a “Spanish-speaking” part of the world, is in fact a region of great linguistic diversity and complexity (see Table 1). The history and hegemony of the colonial languages, Spanish and Portuguese; the elusiveness and elitism of immigrant languages such as German, Italian, Japanese, and English; and the variety and vitality of the indigenous languages have combined to pose continuing challenges to language planners and policy makers. For the colonial languages, which have long enjoyed official status, the pressing language planning issues are those concerning standardization vis-a-vis national and international varieties. Immigrant language concerns maintain a relatively low profile in the policy and planning arena.

Literacy in South America must be understood against the backdrop of the linguistic diversity there. Of the fourteen nations and territories of South America, only Uruguay and the Falkland Islands are monolingual, in Spanish and English respectively. Every other country encompasses from 7 to 200 languages within its borders.

This article examines ideologies surrounding Quechua's use as a lingua franca and contrasts these ideologies with the historical and ethnographic record across pre-Colombian, colonial, and postcolonial times. Drawing from classic and recent research on Quechua sociolinguistics and comparatively on current work in the study of World Englishes and English as a lingua franca, we describe ways in which Quechua possibly served as a lingua franca, but also argue that Quechua's role and potential as lingua franca have often been misunderstood. We illustrate how these misunderstandings are intertwined with some of the myths and ideologies surrounding the Quechua language in particular and lingua francas more generally. Specifically, we argue that Quechua as lingua franca has been neither one stable, standardized variety nor a politically neutral communicative tool. Further, we highlight some of the overlooked ways in which local varieties and local speakers of the lingua franca have responded to, and in some cases resisted, the inequities and ideologies associated with the lingua franca.

Indigenous languages are under siege, not only in the US but around the world – in danger of disappearing because they are not being transmitted to the next generation. Immigrants and their languages worldwide are similarly subjected to seemingly irresistible social, political, and economic pressures. This article discusses a number of such cases, including Shawandawa from the Brazilian Amazon, Quechua in the South American Andes, the East Indian communities of South Africa, Khmer in Philadelphia, Welsh, Maori, Turkish in the UK, and Native Californian languages. At a time when phrases like “endangered languages” and “linguicism” are invoked to describe the plight of the world's vanishing linguistic resources in their encounter with the phenomenal growth of world languages such as English, the cases reviewed here provide consistent and compelling evidence that language policy and language education serve as vehicles for promoting the vitality, versatility, and stability of these languages, and ultimately promote the rights of their speakers to participate in the global community on and IN their own terms. (Endangered languages, immigrant languages, indigenous languages, language revitalization, linguicism)