ABSTRACT
This chapter is an introduction to language policy, which includes language-in-education policy, in the Philippines, focusing on features of the policy and the social mechanisms which produced it which have helped construct the shape of Philippine English, or, better yet, unequal Englishes in the country. It looks at how language policy has helped construct unequal Englishes in the Philippines. Language policy was one of the cornerstones of American colonial rule in the country, having imposed English as the sole language of instruction, but even after nominal independence in 1946, postcolonial language policy-making has continued to be a party to the legitimization of the dominant role of English in Philippine society. Language policy in the Philippines today continues to bear significant traces of American colonialism.
