Traces of old and new center-periphery dynamics in language-in-education policy and practice: Insights from a linguistic ethnographic study in Timor-Leste

Citation

Da Costa Cabral I & Martin-Jones M (2017) Traces of old and new center-periphery dynamics in language-in-education policy and practice: Insights from a linguistic ethnographic study in Timor-Leste. AILA Review; Meaning Making in the Periphery, 30 (1), pp. 96-119. https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.00005.dac

Abstract
This article reveals how center-periphery relations have unfolded, over time, in language policy processes in one nation – Timor-Leste – on the global periphery. We take a longue durée perspective on the language policy processes at work in this historical context, showing how different regimes of language were imposed, in the past, by colonisers from distant centers – in Portugal and then in Java, Indonesia. Then, turning to the post-independence period, we show how a new order of indexicality, forged within the Resistance to the Indonesian occupation, formed the basis for current language policy in Timor-Leste, with Portuguese and Tetum as co-official languages. We also demonstrate that this agentive policy move, from the global periphery, oriented Timor-Leste to new and more complex center-periphery relations, to a ‘lusophone’ world, with Portugal and Brazil as key players. Our account of contemporary policy discourses in Timor-Leste, and of the consequences for language policy implementation, on different scales (national and local), draws on recent research of an ethnographic and multi-scalar nature conducted in Timor-Leste (Da Costa Cabral, 2015).

Keywords
center-periphery dynamics; language ideologies; language policy; multilingual

Journal
AILA Review; Meaning Making in the Periphery: Volume 30, Issue 1