Security and Language Policy

This chapter draws critical security studies into the investigation of language policy for two reasons. First, it provides informative commentary on how the concept of security is being reconfigured, with developments in digital technology, large-scale population movements, and the privatisation of public services. Second, it is increasingly attentive to how geopolitics permeates the everyday. Accordingly, critical security studies can generate considerable scope for connection with research on language in society. This chapter provides two case studies of security and language policy in which “enemy” and “fear” have been active principles in language policy development. The first case shows how security has become an increasingly influential theme in the United Kingdom. The second case, focusing on Cyprus, describes how legacies of large-scale violent conflict can generate rather unexpected ground-level enactments of language education policy.