Discourses in Australian policy on Asian languages : a study of metaphor

Abstract

Most policy researchers study the gap between the policy description and reality. However, there is often a 'gap' within the policy text itself between what is said and what is embedded in the metaphors used. Language, especially metaphor, carries rich connotations. Some metaphors are so entrenched in people's thoughts and feelings that people hardly identify them as metaphors. They give hints about how a particular way of thinking and acting influences the way people think and act during the course of history. This paper uses metaphors as a tool of enquiry to identify the dominant discourses embedded in Australian languages policies. This thesis adopts a 'fine-grained' policy analysis to read and analyse metaphors. The policy documents on Australian languages policies used in this thesis range across languages as a whole, Asian languages generally and Chinese in particular. Metaphors are searched around focal concepts, such as 'countries', 'teacher', 'teaching', 'students', 'learning', 'program' and 'resource'. Metaphors in this study include 'creative metaphors', 'conventional metaphors' and 'conceptual metaphors'. Metaphors are studied through the traces of historical meanings they carry. The findings suggest that the discourse of the economy is the dominant discourse, which takes up two thirds of the total key discourses. This also shows that the languages policy making during 2005-2008 is economically oriented and is caught within the discourse of 'neo-liberalism'. The National Policy on Languages in 1987, a good example for languages policy-making, identified four dimensions in languages policy-making: 'enrichment, equity, economics and external'. However, the findings suggest that only one aspect has been covered in current languages policies.

Date of Award	2011
Original language	English