This critical ethnographic account of the Yangon deaf community in
Myanmar offers unique insights into the dynamics of a vibrant linguistic
and cultural minority community in the region and also sheds further
light on broader questions around language policy.
The book examines language policies on different scales, demonstrating
how unofficial policies in the local deaf school and wider Yangon deaf
community impact responses to higher level interventions, namely the
2007 government policy aimed at unifying the country's two sign
languages. Foote highlights the need for a critical and
interdisciplinary approach to the study of language policy, unpacking
the interplay between language ideologies, power relations, political
and moral interests and community conceptualisations of citizenship. The
study's findings are situated within wider theoretical debates within
linguistic anthropology, questioning existing paradigms on the notion of
linguistic authenticity and contributing to ongoing debates on the
relationship between language policy and social justice.
Offering an important new contribution to critical work on language
policy, the book will be of particular interest to students and scholars
in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and language education.