[lg policy] The prehistory of language policy

[Dave Sayers]

Hello assembled folks who are not currently on holiday...

Can anyone recommend a concise reading covering examples of 'language policy' from 
ancient times up to the French Revolution? (Or maybe up to the Reformation?) I'm 
doing an intro lecture for an LPP course I'm designing, with an overview of such 
historical precursors, and I'm hoping to find a short reading to go with it.

There is an excellent historical review of such precursors in France and India 
provided by our benevolent mailing list overlord Hal Schiffman, in 'Linguistic 
Culture and Language Policy'  -- http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0415184061/. Similarly, 
the various contributors to 'Language Policy and National Unity', 
http://goo.gl/0iZ2mj, give some good historical reviews for their respective countries.

However, these aren't really framed as a review of the prehistory of language policy 
as such, more the prehistory of language policies in these particular polities. 
They're also not really a concise type of summary.

Bernard Spolsky's 'Language Policy' http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0521011752 has some 
mention of historical precursors in various contexts, mostly in ch.2-3, but these are 
sort of peppered throughout the chapters -- again, a little too dispersed for what 
I'm after.

There are some pertinent points in Vivien Law's 'The History of Linguistics in 
Europe: From Plato to 1600', e.g. p.155 
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4QOTTpX2NTMC&pg=PA115, but that's more about the 
study of language, not really language policies.

I was hoping for something shorter, ideally a chapter in a textbook about these sorts 
of historical precursors to what we now call language policy.

Any thoughts, folks?

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK
Visiting Lecturer (2013-14), Dept English, University of Turku, Finland
dave.sayers at cantab.net
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers
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