Analyzing Language Policies in New Media

Media can be seen to carry out all functions of language policy and may have their own explicit language policies, implicit policies, or a mixture of both. New media, and in particular the World Wide Web, are a non-traditional domain for the study of language policy and language planning. This chapter deals with how to investigate language policy in new media environments, highlighting a number of possible research directions, both on the “monologic” and “dialogic” Web. National governments have traditionally been major agents of language policy in the modern era, attempting to fix languages to borders. National media tried to replicate this attempt to fix media borders along linguistic-political borderlines. The Web, which is constructed as an explicitly global medium, also provides an ideal domain in which to explore issues of language policy and globalization.