English and language policies in East and Southeast Asia

This chapter briefly reviews developments in both status planning, that is the social and official roles languages may have in political systems, and corpus planning, that is how languages can be standardized so that they can better fulfill particular functions. It presents an overview of a range of issues connected to language-in-education policies, including policies relating to the choice of language, policies relating to programs, policies relating to personnel, and policies relating to pedagogy. The chapter discusses a number of case studies which illustrate the linguistic and cultural diversity of East Asia and countries which comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) while, at the same time, showing that there is an overall trend toward regional language-in-education policies promoting the respective national language and English, often at the expense of regional and local languages