Examining the Political Origins of Language Policies

Huw Lewis and Elin Royles analyse the origins of specific language policies and trace their development over time. They argue that existing literature on language policy fails to identify how and why particular choices emerge and how these are related to political factors. As a conceptual framework, Lewis and Royles examine historical institutionalism and its focus on how political institutions influence policy decisions and interact with other institutions. They consider the usefulness of the concepts of ‘path dependence’ and ‘critical juncture’ for understanding language policy formation. They then apply a neo-institutionalist approach to analyse two key policy measures for the Welsh language. They conclude that the neo-institutionalist approach facilitates a greater understanding of how policy is formed but is only one such theory that can be used to this end.