Abstract

In Applied Linguistics and more specifically in the field of Language Policy, what counts as ‘language policy’ is regularly being discussed and challenged (e.g. Ricento, 2005; Gazzola et al., 2023). Whilst some offer conceptualisations of language policy that expand its remit, others return to more traditional understandings of the notion in fear of losing the analytical power of the concept. This talk is situated within the “Empirical turn” (Johnson and Ricento, 2013) of language policy research and the related micro-level ethnographic investigations of language policy processes (e.g. McCarty, 2011), contributing therefore to the expansion of the conceptualisation of what counts as ‘language policy’. In this talk, I will present my tri-partite framework of ‘declared’, ‘perceived’ and ‘practiced’ language policy, which builds on Spolsky’s (e.g. 2004) work. I will then zoom in on the notion of ‘practiced language policy’ itself and demonstrate how it can be analysed by drawing on a Conversation Analysis of a set of interactional data I collected in various educational settings (see also Bonacina-Pugh and Liddicoat, Forthcoming). I will shed light on (1) what can be referred as the ‘practical’ approach to language policy research (Bonacina-Pugh, 2020), (2) what is meant by ‘practice’ in this line of research, and (3) how practiced language policies can be seen as dynamic (Bonacina-Pugh, 2024). Finally, I will show how the concept of ‘practiced language policy’ advances the Empirical turn in language policy research and how it has recently been adopted and developed in a variety of domains other than that of education, such as the home, online communication, the workplace, healthcare settings and public spaces.