Researcher positionality

Abstract

Language policy and planning (LPP) as a field of studies emerging in 1950s and 1960s has largely been “problem-oriented” and responded to the needs of the newly established states; many of them had just gained independence from their former colonial powers (Spolsky 2008, 137). The early LPP researchers were technical in their orientations, seeing their task as one of planning, standardizing, regulating, containing, or managing linguistic diversity for the national development agendas of building national cohesion and modern economic development. LPP researchers saw their work consisting of status planning, corpus planning (Kloss 1969), and acquisition planning/language education planning. This chapter discusses researcher positionality with reference to three kinds of knowledge-constitutive interest. These will be illustrated with LPP studies in the case of Hong Kong. It outlines some suggestions about how a researcher can think about issues of researcher positionality when they are planning their research study.