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Article published In:
Meaning Making in the Periphery
Edited by Luiz Paulo Moita-Lopes and Mike Baynham
[AILA Review 30] 2017
► pp. 96–119

Traces of old and new center-periphery dynamics in language-in-education policy and practice

Insights from a linguistic ethnographic study in Timor-Leste

| University of Birmingham, England
| University of Birmingham, England
This article reveals how center-periphery relations have unfolded, over time, in language policy processes in one nation – Timor-Leste – on the global periphery. We take a longue durée perspective on the language policy processes at work in this historical context, showing how different regimes of language were imposed, in the past, by colonisers from distant centers – in Portugal and then in Java, Indonesia. Then, turning to the post-independence period, we show how a new order of indexicality, forged within the Resistance to the Indonesian occupation, formed the basis for current language policy in Timor-Leste, with Portuguese and Tetum as co-official languages. We also demonstrate that this agentive policy move, from the global periphery, oriented Timor-Leste to new and more complex center-periphery relations, to a ‘lusophone’ world, with Portugal and Brazil as key players. Our account of contemporary policy discourses in Timor-Leste, and of the consequences for language policy implementation, on different scales (national and local), draws on recent research of an ethnographic and multi-scalar nature conducted in Timor-Leste (Da Costa Cabral, 2015).
Keywords: center-periphery dynamics, language ideologies, language policy, multilingual
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Changing center-periphery relations, changing discourses about language and changes in language-in-education policy and practice
    • The eastern region of the island of Timor: Imposition of a colonial order (1514–1974)
  • The Indonesian occupation, the imposition of a new center and the East Timorese Resistance (1975–1999)
  • A new nation developing language policy in a global age: The political and discursive challenges for Timor-Leste
  • A linguistic ethnographic study in Timor-Leste
  • Policy discourses: National and global perspectives
  • The year 6 classroom and teacher Dalia
  • Talk around the textbook: Linking different ‘lusophone’ worlds
  • Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 15 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.00005.dac
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