Explores parallel and divergent developments in language policy and language rights in the U.S. and Canada, especially the past 4 decades, as a basis for reflection on what can be learned from one country's experience by the other.

This volume critically analyzes and explains the goals, processes, and effects of language policies in the United States and Canada from historical and contemporary perspectives. The focus of this book is to explore parallel and divergent developments in language policy and language rights in the two countries, especially in the past four decades, as a basis for reflection on what can be learned from one country's experience by the other. Effects of language policies and practices on majority and minority individuals and groups are evaluated. Differences in national and regional language situations in the U.S. and Canada are traced to historical and sociological, demographic, and legal factors which have sometimes been inappropriately generalized or ignored by ideologues. The point is to show that certain general principles of economics and sociology apply to the situations in both countries, but that differing notions of sovereignty, state and nation, ethnicity, pluralism, and multiculturalism have shaped attitudes and policies in significant ways. Understanding the bases for these varying attitudes and policies provides a clearer understanding of the idiosyncratic as well as more universal factors that contribute to tensions between groups and to outcomes, many of which are unintended. The volume makes clear that language matters always involve issues of culture, economics, politics, individual and group identities, and local and national histories. The chapters provide detailed analyses on a wide range of issues at the national, state/provincial, and local levels in both countries. The chapter authors come from a variety of academic disciplines (education, geography, journalism, law, linguistics, political science, and sociology), and the findings, taken together, contribute to an evolving, interdisciplinary theory of language policy.

Language policies are political. They have political consequences as well as political origins. In State Traditions and Language Regimes, scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America shift focus from the consequences of language policies to how and why states make language policy choices. This shift, theorized through the concept of "language regime," inserts an urgently needed political science perspective into the current dialogue between sociolinguists, who research the societal effects of language policies, and political theorists of language rights, who analyze the normative implications of policies. New analytical tools drawn from comparative politics are showcased to analyze paths taken by different states in establishing language regimes, at times disrupted and redirected at critical junctures. Contributions to the volume include analyses of Canada's increasingly court-driven language policies, the United States’ bifurcated language regime in the aftermath of 9/11, Ireland’s conflicted protection of the Irish language, France's linguistic Jacobin tradition disrupted by Europeanization, the role of political parties and coalitions in language regime stability and change in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, Poland's war-torn history informing policy toward regional languages, and the role of English in international peace-building. While other books look at the political and societal effects of language policy, none seeks to employ a historical institutionalism approach which sets language policy choice in the context of power relations embedded in state traditions. State Traditions and Language Regimes offers a comparative politics perspective, one that enriches interdisciplinary debate on language policy.

A fresh look at one of the great issues of our time

This book focuses on how sign language ideologies influence, manifest in, and are challenged by communicative practices. Sign languages are minority languages using the visual-gestural and tactile modalities, whose affordances are very different from those of spoken languages using the auditory-oral modality.

The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Politics provides a comprehensive overview of the transformation that has occurred in Canadian politics since it acheived autonomy nearly a century ago, examining the institutions and processes of Canadian government and politics at the local, provincial and federal levels. It analyzes all aspects of the Canadian political system: the courts, elections, political parties, Parliament, the constitution, fiscal and political federalism, the diffusion of policies between regions, and various aspects of public policy.

With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Japan embarked on a policy of territorial expansion that would claim Taiwan and Korea, among others. Assimilation policies led to a significant body of literature written in Japanese by colonial writers by the 1930s. After its unconditional surrender in 1945, Japan abruptly receded to a nation-state, establishing its present-day borders. Following Korea’s liberation, Korean was labeled the national language of the Korean people, and Japanese-language texts were purged from the Korean literary canon. At the same time, these texts were also excluded from the Japanese literary canon, which was reconfigured along national, rather than imperial, borders. In Colonizing Language, Christina Yi investigates how linguistic nationalism and national identity intersect in the formation of modern literary canons through an examination of Japanese-language cultural production by Korean and Japanese writers from the 1930s through the 1950s, analyzing how key texts were produced, received, and circulated during the rise and fall of the Japanese empire. She considers a range of Japanese-language writings by Korean colonial subjects published in the 1930s and early 1940s and then traces how postwar reconstructions of ethnolinguistic nationality contributed to the creation of new literary canons in Japan and Korea, with a particular focus on writers from the Korean diasporic community in Japan. Drawing upon fiction, essays, film, literary criticism, and more, Yi challenges conventional understandings of national literature by showing how Japanese language ideology shaped colonial histories and the postcolonial present in East Asia. A Center for Korean Research Book

Popularly thought of as a recreational vehicle and one of the key ingredients of an ideal wilderness getaway, the canoe is also a political vessel. A potent symbol and practice of Indigenous cultures and traditions, the canoe has also been adopted to assert conservation ideals, feminist empowerment, citizenship practices, and multicultural goals. Documenting many of these various uses, this book asserts that the canoe is not merely a matter of leisure and pleasure; it is folded into many facets of our political life. Taking a critical stance on the canoe, The Politics of the Canoe expands and enlarges the stories that we tell about the canoe’s relationship to, for example, colonialism, nationalism, environmentalism, and resource politics. To think about the canoe as a political vessel is to recognize how intertwined canoes are in the public life, governance, authority, social conditions, and ideologies of particular cultures, nations, and states. Almost everywhere we turn, and any way we look at it, the canoe both affects and is affected by complex political and cultural histories. Across Canada and the U.S., canoeing cultures have been born of activism and resistance as much as of adherence to the mythologies of wilderness and nation building. The essays in this volume show that canoes can enhance how we engage with and interpret not only our physical environments, but also our histories and present-day societies.

Since Roe v. Wade, abortion has continued to be a divisive political issue in the United States. In contrast, it has remained primarily a medical issue in Britain and Canada despite the countries’ shared heritage. Doctors and Demonstrators looks beyond simplistic cultural or religious explanations to find out why abortion politics and policies differ so dramatically in these otherwise similar countries. Drew Halfmann argues that political institutions are the key. In the United States, federalism, judicial review, and a private health care system contributed to the public definition of abortion as an individual right rather than a medical necessity. Meanwhile, Halfmann explains, the porous structure of American political parties gave pro-choice and pro-life groups the opportunity to move the issue onto the political agenda. A groundbreaking study of the complex legal and political factors behind the evolution of abortion policy, Doctors and Demonstrators will be vital for anyone trying to understand this contentious issue.

The first book to discuss the Canadian welfare state through a health-focused lens, The Politics of Health in the Canadian Welfare State argues that the nature of Canada’s liberal welfare state shapes the health care system, the social determinants of health, and the health of all Canadians. Documenting decades of work on the social determinants of health, authors Toba Bryant and Dennis Raphael explore topics such as power and influence in Canadian society, socially and economically marginalized populations, and approaches to promoting health. Each chapter examines different aspects of the links between public policy, health, and the welfare state, investigating how broader societal structures and processes of the country’s economic and political systems shape living and working conditions and, inevitably, the overall health of Canadians. Contextualizing the history and status of Canadian health and health care systems with Canada’s welfare state, this concise and timely text is well suited as a supplementary resource for health studies, sociology of health, and nursing courses in universities across Canada.