ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a comparatively framed analysis of social inequality, language diversity, and education policy in South Africa and the US, using ethnographic and sociolinguistic methods to examine policy as an enactment or practice. It employs concepts of language ideology and language register to study how education policies as enacted produce political and cultural subjectivities. The chapter contributes to the anthropology of education policy in several ways. It develops comparative and historical analysis of the evolution of ethnoracial inequality in South Africa and the US, focusing, in particular, on the evolution of White supremacy from slavery to segregation to contemporary struggles for equality of civil rights, in which access to education has been central in both countries. It argues theoretically engaged ethnographic description and analysis, drawing on linguistic anthropological concepts of language ideology and language register to investigate the intertwining of linguistic and social inequality and the influences on education policy.
