Implicit Language Policy

Ingrid, over at Language on the Move, tells the story of how difficult it was to get her university to accept the record of a non-English publication, then draws a smart conclusion about linguistic hegemony:

...no one ever made an explicit policy decision that research publications in languages other than English are less desirable than those in English. However, mundane bureaucratic practices – such as making record entry for a publication in a language other than English more difficult – conspire to have exactly that policy effect. In this way many decisions that seem to have nothing to do with language end up as implicit language policy decisions – the fact that English-language journals dominate the academic rankings is another example from academic publishing (emphasis added).