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This article considers the role that the examination of text plays in empirical language policy research. It begins by examining the state-of-the-art in language policy, observing that a core focus on action represents a shared characteristic of the various strands of discursive and ethnographic research over the last two decades. That is, the emergence of these approaches has accompanied an implicit or explicit shift away from the once dominant conceptualization of language policy as status quo and toward a focus on the dynamic processes through which power is exercised over language use. Reflecting on the widespread use of ethnographic methods to catalogue such processes, I argue that there is a need to reconsider how policy texts are conceptualized and studied from a discursive perspective. While much of the available toolkit treats policy texts as static products, giving little consideration to how they are embedded in the dynamics of policy, I propose an expanded focus on language policy as (re)entextualization, in which text is continuously formed and re-formed through time-space. This better accounts for the reality of policy, which involves cycles of writing and rewriting, as well as interpreting and re-interpreting, by different actors with different agendas, in different spaces at different times. Such a reconceptualization also offers more backing for the study of how language policy texts are agentively transformed and fragmented, and better supports the investigation of how language is instrumentalized in exercises of power in society.
