This paper develops a spatial approach to language policy. Language policy processes are intricately intertwined with spatial production. From managing transnational organizations to establishing national boundaries, and from expanding businesses to migrating individuals. The regulation of language – linguistic and broader semiotic activities – is often motivated by desires to delimit boundaries or to create new connections in space. Despite its central role in language policy processes, the concept of space remains peripheral in the theorization of language policy. This paper re-centralizes the function of language policy as a mechanism of spatial production.

The two dominating models in language policy research – the ‘onion’ model (Ricento & Hornberger 1996) and the ‘multi-domain’ model (Spolsky 2009) – have focused on contested policy interpretations and conflicted management strategies permeating language policy processes. I argue that a spatial theory of language policy needs to address these practical indeterminacies as well as the ontological indeterminacy in language ecology. Space is produced through language policy in distributed processes – material and discursive, historical and contemporary, and political and economic – that are inseparable from but also extend beyond the agentive conduct of individual actors. I introduce the Deleuzo-Guattarian rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari 1987 [2013]) in complementation to the existing models for presenting these processes of spatial production.

I demonstrate my theoretical argument through business language practices in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) – a recent project of regional integration in southern China. Examples are drawn from policy documents, websites, participant interviews and artifacts collected during my ethnographic fieldwork.

References

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987 [2013]). A thousand plateaus. London: Bloomsbury.

Ricento, T., & Hornberger, N. H. (1996). Unpeeling the onion: Language planning and policy and the ELT professionl. TESOL Quarterly, 30(3), 401-427.

Spolsky, B. (2021). Rethinking language policy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.