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International audience; Building on previous studies, this paper addresses the geopolitics of knowledge circulation in an academic field known as sociolinguistics in France, showing firstly the common erasure of research produced in the Global South and in languages other than English, and secondly the need to decolonise entire fields of research, in which analytic frameworks are mostly produced in hegemonic Global centres. As part of this special issue, we ask how far concepts rooted in Southern or non-hegemonic experiences are marginalized, co-opted or reused in academic circles in the West in general and in France in particular. As a modest epistemological contribution, this paper then focuses on two concepts – sumak kawsay/buen vivir and translanguaging – looking at their archaeology and development and at how they circulate in these fields, both in Northern and Southern academic circles. Both examples illustrate their circulation but also erasures and compartmentalisation through language.

This research, conducted at a major university in Tanzania, investigated the personal experiences of multilingual students vis-à-vis the government's language policy requiring Swahili as the language of instruction (LoI) at the primary level and English at the secondary level. The participants, who spoke 25 different languages as their L1, were placed into 49 different language groups and asked to write what they remembered about the language policy where they attended school. The data show that Gramsci's cultural hegemony is occurring in Tanzania. The 'common sense' is that people truly believe English is symbolic of prestige and power–even though few people know it or use it. The parents insist that their children be taught in English (consensus), and the schools strictly enforce the language policy (coercion). As subalterns, the students in this research reported that they did acquire Swahili, but they also wrote about knowing the LoI when they began school; undergoing inordinate physical and psychological punishment; feeling their L1s were stigmatized; and learning little English–or any other subject. Thus, the elites of the country have been trying to impose a European language on the citizens–in lieu of an educated, multilingual, African nation.

This paper draws from a collaborative project in which we piloted a Critical Multilingual Language Awareness approach (CMLA) in a preparatory class for recently arrived secondary school students in Sweden. We adapted material on Language Awareness from We Are Multilingual (https://www.wamcam.org). This adapted approach followed the five principles of educational design for multilingual learners, which also relate to cognitive, performative, affective, social and power domains of Language Awareness. Data consist of audio- and video-recorded interactions from classroom observations, student/teacher interviews, and teaching/student-produced material. With a process-oriented focus, we discuss student participation in this co-learning design as contingent upon practices of curiosity. A focus is also on the co-learning process through reflection on activity, and how cultivating new ways of listening, involving multilingual study mentoring, may spur linguistic participation.

Research on pragmatic awareness of language learners has mainly focused on the target language. As argued by some scholars, a multilingual perspective should also be adopted in the analysis of pragmatic awareness. In fact, existing findings point to the peculiar characteristics of multilingual pragmatic comprehension and awareness. Bearing these aspects in mind, this paper focuses on the pragmatic awareness of multilingual learners while they are performing a collaborative writing task in three different languages, namely those of Catalan, Spanish, and English. The corpus consists of recordings from 30 university students’ oral interactions while working in pairs to write three email request messages. In an attempt to provide a holistic and ecological account of learners’ performance, pragmatic-related episodes were identified by considering Brown and Levinson’s politeness features (1987) and Leech’s (1983) approach to pragmatic competence. Results are in line with previous studies tackling multilingual learners of English and they provide us with interesting insights about the mechanisms that multilingual students activate when planning and performing pragmatic production tasks during collaborative work. Las investigaciones llevadas a cabo en torno a la conciencia pragmática de los estudiantes de lenguas se han centrado principalmente en la lengua meta. Tal y como exponen algunos académicos, se debería también adoptar una perspectiva multilingüe en el análisis de la conciencia pragmática. De hecho, las pruebas existentes nos señalan las peculiaridades que caracterizan la comprensión y la conciencia pragmática multilingüe. Teniendo en cuenta estos aspectos, este artículo se centra en la conciencia pragmática de estudiantes multilingües al momento de realizar una tarea colaborativa en tres lenguas diferentes, concretamente catalán, castellano e inglés. El corpus analizado consiste en las grabaciones orales de 30 estudiantes universitarios que, en parejas, redactaron conjuntamente tres correos electrónicos donde se formula una petición. Los episodios pragmáticos fueron identificados siguiendo las características de cortesía propuestas por Brown y Levinson (1987) al igual que el enfoque adoptado por Leech (1983) hacia la competencia pragmática en un intento de dotar de una visión más holística y ecológica al estudio. Los resultados coinciden con investigaciones previas que abordan estudiantes multilingües de inglés y nos proveen de un nuevo entendimiento sobre los mecanismos que dichos estudiantes activan al momento de planificar y realizar tareas con un componente pragmático y colaborativo.

This article questions theoretically the conceptualisation of creativity put forth by the translanguaging paradigm, i.e. the speakers' ability to push and break language boundaries and flout behavioural norms. It does so by considering Michel de Certeau's view of everyday language use as creative by virtue of its being able to take advantage of a space of action. De Certeau's view emphasises the existence of constraints as a key aspect of creativity in everyday practices, which challanges the idea that multilingual creativity is necessarily to be seen as transcending boundaries and being disruptive. Questo saggio vaglia da un punto di vista teorico la concettualizzazione di creatività portata avanti dal translanguaging, definita come l'abilità dei parlanti di spingere e rompere i confini tra le lingue e trasgredire norme comportamentali. Prende in considerazione la prospettiva di Michel de Certeau sull'uso della lingua nel quotidiano, che, secondo l'autore, è creativa in quanto capace di trarre vantaggio da uno spazio d'azione. De Certeau pone l'accento sull'esistenza di limiti come aspetto chiave della creatività nelle pratiche quotidiane, il che mette in discussione l'idea che la creatività multilingue sia necessariamente da vedere come travalicamento di confini e come dirompenza.

Purpose: Papua New Guinea (PNG) has extreme linguistic diversity reflected in its three national languages and sociolinguistic diversity comprising over 380 vernaculars or Tokples, English and the lingua francas, which include Tok Pisin (TP). This first clinical cross-sectional study of consonant acquisition in TP-speaking children sought to identify universal features and the impact of age on phonological development. Method: A local picture naming task was developed and used to elicit a speech sample from 80 children (aged 3;0–6;11). Phonetic and phonemic inventories and developmental phonological processes were analysed across the sample and also in 12-month age groups. Result: Statistically significant differences were found between the Percentage Consonants Correct (PCC) of the 3YO and other age groups. Mean PCC increased with age, but high variation within age groups meant differences were not statistically significant. Universal features observed included the early acquisition of plosives and late mastery of /r/. Language-specific features included processes such as fricatisation and earlier acquisition of /ʤ/ before /s/. Creolisation was seen in morphophonemic condensation and the influence of loanwords. Conclusion: This study demonstrates both universal and language-specific features amidst wide diversity influencing phonological acquisition in creolising TP. This first phonological study of TP consonant development will inform future clinical speech-language pathology practice in PNG.

Researchers have traditionally relied on institutionally-defined, native speaker conceptions of linguistic competence to define whether or not individual learners are multilingual. However, to better understand the relationship between language and identity in the context of additional language learning, there is a need to widen the definition of multilingualism by including a larger repertoire of semiotic competences and a wider range of levels of linguistic competence. To date, little systematic research has investigated the relationship between different key variables influencing language learners’ construction of their multilingual identity (MI). Based on surveys completed by 1338 learners in seven secondary schools in England, this paper reports on a structural equation modelling of key latent variables influencing MI. The analysis suggests that MI is more strongly correlated with direct experiential contact with languages and with social interaction than with explicit beliefs about language learning. Similarly, the influence of parental beliefs is greater than those of teachers or friends. The paper also considers the significance of potential differences between EAL and non-EAL respondents and urban and rural school contexts. Having conducted SEM we offer support for our theorisation of MI as an outcome latent variable composed of three main components, namely, experience, evaluation and emotion.

Studies regarding executive functions (EFs) in children rarely focus on populations of North Africa countries. In this context, this research aimed to adapt EFs tests to the Moroccan context and provide preliminary normative data on the development of inhibitory control and working memory (WM). In addition, the executive performance of school-age Moroccan children was examined, as well as the effects of gender, parents' education level and multilingualism. The sample included 115 children at age 7 to 12 from Fes city. Results showed that the translation and adaptation steps were sufficient for the cross-cultural adaptation of the tasks. In addition, an overall effect of age on inhibition and WM performances was found, whereas gender and parents' education level showed non-significant effects. Multilingualism effects had a partial positive influence on EFs, with improved scores on a few executive tasks for multilingual children compared to their bilingual peers. Overall, results suggest that EFs in school-age Moroccan children operate on relatively homogeneous development trajectories, marked by improvements that differ according to tasks. As neuropsychological tools and normative data are still lacking in Morocco, this study helps better understand EFs development of children in this country.

The present study examines language awareness between bilinguals and monolingual children. Language awareness is a person's explicit understanding of language and its role in thinking, learning, and social life, which is associated with executive functioning. Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) test was designed to evaluate executive functioning. The test includes two parts: verbal and non-verbal. In this study, the verbal part including Twenty Questions, Word context, and proverb of D-KEFS was used. Kurdish-Persian bilinguals and Persian monolinguals attended this study. The results showed that in the Twenty Questions, word context, and proverb, there was a significant difference between bilinguals and monolinguals. Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in both twenty-question and word context tests, while they performed lower on the proverb test. It can be concluded that bilingualism affects language awareness and also influences different aspects of executive functioning in different manners.

The productive challenges of the linguistic and cultural unknown provide a framework for this exploration of texts created or published between 1906 and 1915 on Constantinople by Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Joseph Conrad, Wyndham Lewis, and Vasily Kamensky, which engage with the multifarious expressions and stimuli of the imperial capital. The heterogeneity of narrative and cognitive strategies with which they convey their experiences connotes Constantinople as a contested object of desire of several national and supranational forces between East and West that defies the single, monolingual community, be it imagined or real. The multilingual and multiscriptal print culture of Constantinople, as well as the modernist writers’ literary and artistic imagination and their various translation and transcription practices, delineate what Bodin defines as heterolingualism, namely, linguistic – or literary – situations where communication in one language directed to other languages and produced in otherscripts forms the expected precondition. World Literatures – Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics

Mother tongue-based education has been central to the promotion of early literacy skills in many multilingual contexts of the Global South. However, learners in such environments may face significant linguistic challenges when changing language of instruction during schooling. In particular, the linguistic distance between mother tongue and official language may be a significant barrier to learners. This paper provides an empirical approach to this issue by employing language matching based on linguistic distance between languages to explore changes in literacy scores for learners who change language of instruction. Findings show that the greater the linguistic distance between two languages the larger the loss in foundational literacy. We conclude that language matching could be introduced as a tool to identify at-risk learners during transitions and, if possible, as a tool for linguistic allocation of students who have the possibility of selecting between schools with different languages for instruction.

Objective: The prevailing scientific literature aggregates Asians living in America into one omnibus category and thus can problematically result in a subpar and at times inaccurate understanding of health, social and cultural factors necessary for competent and informed medical care. Method: A literature search was conducted by cultural experts familiar with Asian Indian culture with a focus on immigrants from this community living in the US. Database using search engines was sought in the following domains: immigration patterns, prevalence for key medical and neurological conditions commonly associated with cognitive dysfunction, psychiatric/psychological needs in the community, some preliminary neuropsychological testing considerations while working with this community, and treatment considerations that could affect adherence and efficacy of outcomes. Articles were selected from 2000 to the most recent date, with emphasis on compiling information from review papers and meta-analysis from the past decade. Conclusions: Asian Indians living in the US are distinct from the larger Asian American community. Immigration trends underscore that Asian Indians have a bimodal distribution of wealth. Regarding medical conditions, a key and highly concerning finding is the higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors, especially in young males. The lack of non-existent cognitive data in this community is glaring and should serve as an impetus for conducting high-priority research in this community. Preliminary neuropsychological testing considerations are discussed from a practical perspective with emphasis on multilingualism and region of origin. Finally, treatment considerations include understanding attitudes and beliefs regarding traditional medicine.

Over the past few decades, many Southeast Asian governments have promoted English language education (hereafter ELE) as a linguistic pathway for developing human capital and improving global economic competitiveness of their nations. However, Kirkpatrick (2017. Language education policy among the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). European Journal of Language Policy, 9(1), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.3828/ejlp.2017.2) raises a valid concern that if the current language education policy of teaching only the national language plus English is retained in Southeast Asian polities, future multilinguals in the region will likely be transformed into bilinguals with proficiency in the national language and English. While instrumentalist discourses have shaped ELE policy in the region, the current status of English has also been facilitated, to a large extent, by a set of common ELE ‘fallacies’ [Phillipson (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press]. This paper seeks to firstly address the ideological fallacies of ELE that underlie the pursuit of English. We then call for a reorientation towards viewing multilingualism-as-resource(s), and propose a ‘Na/ver/in’ multilingual model for Southeast Asian primary education. This model seeks to promote the combined use of the (na)tional language, (ver)nacular language(s)/regional lingua franca and (in)ternational language for primary education. We further argue that the way forward is a more balanced, inclusive, socially equitable and ethical approach to language policy and planning, informing the Naverin model.

Empirical research on L3 teachers' beliefs has gained momentum in the last decade since teacher cognition is paramount for understanding teaching practices in multilingual settings. Yet, many of these works deal with experienced language practitioners (e.g. [Otwinowska, A. (2017). English teachers' language awareness: Away with the monolingual bias? Language Awareness, 26 (4), 304–324]) and focus on the impact of instruction about multilingual pedagogies (e.g. [Gorter, D., & Arocena, E. (2020). Teachers' beliefs about multilingualism in a course on translanguaging. System, 92 (102272)]. Less attention has been awarded to pre-service content teachers ([Portolés, L., & Martí, O. (2020). Teachers' beliefs about multilingual pedagogies and the role of initial training. International Journal of Multilingualism, 17(2), 248–264; Schroedler, T., & Fischer, N. (2020). The role of beliefs in teacher professionalisation for multilingual classroom settings. European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8 (1), 49–72]) or to the effect of individual factors other than teacher training on their beliefs. To address this research gap, the present paper examines whether external and internal factors affect 121 teacher trainees' cognition about multilingualism in Infant and Primary education. Although no significant differences across groups are found, results depict a teacher's profile more inclined towards implementing multilingual policies.

Teaching multilingual learning groups is an important part of the professional activity of primary teachers in Germany, placing high demands on their occupational professionalism. The aim of this a...

Multilingualism is highly prevalent in schools around the world. Yet, the relationship between multilingualism and academic attainment is not well understood. Where research on this topic exists, i...

The paper investigates multilingual aesthetics in Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2007). It argues that the novel refuses and undermines the family romance of the moth...

Purpose: This study addresses the question of whether sequential bilingual children’s past tense marking development in their second language (L2) is affected by their knowledge of temporal marking...

Stories and storytelling have always been around. We humans are used to telling each other stories to, among others, make meaning, build memories, and teach morals; however, it has not been until h...

In classrooms in India where the instructional language is to be English, speakers use reported speech in Indian regional languages for pedagogical purposes, renegotiating the roles and statuses am...

Multilingualism is a modern idea for solving the linguistic problems of multi-ethnic countries, strongly demanded by today’s more globalised and multicultural era (Li, 2016, p. 7). Commonly defined ...

The starting point for this research is an eTandem initiative between learners of Mandarin Chinese and German. The participants mainly learnt the dominant variety of their target languages (German ...

Multilingualism in the world is the norm and the classrooms are no exception. The dynamic and flexible practices of multilingual teachers and learners in the classroom are referred to as translanguaging . As shown in the literature on the topic, translanguaging discourse simply exists in classrooms. It is the means of communication employed by multilingual learners in multilingual learning settings. However, research on classroom pragmatics has adopted a monolingual perspective, and the need to examine multilingual learners and teachers from a multilingual viewpoint has been raised. Bearing this research gap in mind, this study focuses on examining teachers’ reactions to learners’ translingual practices as instances of attitudinal conduct and potential sources of incidental pragmatic learning. Data for the study comprise transcripts from twelve video-recorded English as L3 lessons involving 268 learners (m.a. = 8.4) and 12 teachers. Interestingly, this study confirms the role of the language programme in the classroom requestive behaviour and the existing monolingual bias in young multilingual instructional settings.

Research on multilingualism in the home has approached the family as a fixed unit thus neglecting the dynamic view of the family and its intersection with family language practices. The present study aims to address this gap by focusing on Russian-speaking mothers in Finland who have raised their children bilingually in single-parent as well as in dual-parent families. Russian speakers are the largest minority language group in Finland, and their number is constantly growing. The current study is a contribution to the research on family language practices in the Finnish context. It examines the nexus of shifts in family configurations and language practices and explores how the dynamic changes in family constellations shape language practices in four families. The study reveals that creating new kinships leads to shifts in the language practices of the peripheral family members and that forming voluntary kin can expand heritage language use and enable an overhearer and bystander role for children. Non-residential family members expand the family's linguistic repertoire and support the legitimacy of already established practices. Being sole caretakers enables mothers to encourage language practices that they consider beneficial for their children without encountering any resistance from other family members. peerReviewed

This study examines the experiences of mixed-race Korean Americans in their journey to develop and use their heritage language, Korean, through in-depth autobiographical interviews. Participants hi...

Drawn on the notion of linguistic entrepreneurship (De Costa, P., Park, J. S., & Wee, L. (2016). Language learning as linguistic entrepreneurship: Implications for language education. Asia-Pacific ...

Language policy involves deliberate choices about language, including consideration of its form and function by specialised agencies with the power to implement and sustain such policies (Kaplan & ...

While the role of parental ideologies on children’s bi/multilingual development and the role of children’s beliefs about multilingualism are well-documented, less work examines how parental and stu...

The field of family language policy has flourished in recent years addressing an ever-increasing breadth of transnational populations, family types, and linguistic configurations. Furthermore, diverse established and innovative methodological approaches have unlatched the door to enhanced understandings of family multilingualism. A focus on ethnographic approaches is in line with current trends in sociolinguistic enquiry, providing deep insight into multilingual families, as demonstrated by this thematic issue on ‘Exploring the multilingual family repertoire: Ethnographic approaches’, edited by Luk Van Mensel and Maartje De Meulder. An underlying current in the studies of this special issue is the notion of the family as a space, negotiated through the multilingual family repertoire – multilingual practices that embrace the speakers’ lived experiences. This concluding discussion analyzes the ways in which the four articles address the family as a multilingual space and highlights some of the more salient aspects that deserve further attention, looking beyond at new potential approaches to critically addressing family multilingualism.

Sharing research results internationally has become a hallmark of modern science. In many countries, scholars are expected to publish in journals that promise high citation scores, boosting the rec...

This study investigates the acquisition of null subjects by Mandarin Chinese native speakers (‘Chinese NSs’ hereafter), with different levels of L2 English proficiency, at initial stages of L3 Ital...

Research suggests that individual differences in additional language learning may play a more important role in taxing situations when learners are confronted with unfamiliar or difficult tasks. However, studies to date have mostly focused on second language (L2) learners/bilinguals, while individual differences within multilingual populations remain under-researched. Working with university-level multilingual adults, we compared the effectiveness of traditional instruction (familiar) and concept-based instruction (unfamiliar) to teach the past tense/aspect distinction in Spanish. Learners were pre- and post-tested on their knowledge of the target structure and assessed on language learning aptitude, working memory capacity, verbal-imagery cognitive style and attitudes. While both treatment groups demonstrated significantly improved metalinguistic knowledge, we found no statistical differences between the two groups in terms of knowledge gained or attitudes, and individual differences in cognitive ability were not associated with observed gains. This set of results indicates that the cognitive individual differences measured seemingly no longer played a significant role in these multilinguals’ performance in the instructional conditions examined. In addition, neither language learning experience nor typological closeness between known languages had any significant impact. We propose that extensive experience with explicit language instruction may have led to a levelling effect, as previously observed in L2 learners.

The complexity of language contact and intercultural communication has generated various issues in relation to language use and education. As one of the many Chinese dialects (fangyans), the Chaosh...

How do teachers deal with multilingual pupils, and what reasons govern these choices? Whereas most studies on this topic have examined teachers in schools with monolingual policies, this paper incl...

Neoteric studies on the sociolinguistics of Brunei point to a changing linguistic scene that sees English growing in terms of popularity and importance particularly among young Bruneians. So popula...

This article describes how and why plurilingual preachers in a Muslim ethnic group in Indonesia self-interpret their religious orations in rural settings. During an ethnographic, sociolinguistic st...

Bringing to the field of third language (L3) research a new population of speakers, namely heritage speaker (HS) L3 learners, this study investigates the accents of 19 German-Italian HSs in L3 Engl...

The L1 subject is a central meeting place for all students regardless of their linguistic backgrounds. Thus explorations of multilingualism in the L1 subject provide the potential for enhancing all students’ multilinguality. In Norway, several policy papers have emphasised the important role of the L1 Norwegian subject in promoting students’ multilingualism as a resource, but guidelines are lacking on how this should be facilitated. Consequently, L1 teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism are central to understanding how and to what extent they implement a multilingual pedagogy. Whereas previous research in the Norwegian context has mainly explored foreign language teachers’ beliefs on multilingualism, this study investigated L1 Norwegian teachers’ beliefs on how the subject can be taught in an increasingly diverse language classroom. Ten upper secondary school teachers discussed these topics in focus groups. Most of the teachers had a language-as-problem orientation to their students’ multilingualism. In particular, they found it challenging to improve minority students’ Norwegian skills. Moreover, they rarely encouraged the use of minority students’ multilingualism as a resource in the classroom. They also reported little guidance from textbooks. The findings suggest a strong need for supporting L1 subject teachers in developing a multilingual mindset and for creating suitable teaching materials. publishedVersion

Linguistic schoolscapes (LS), according to Brown ([2012]. The linguistic landscape of educational spaces: Language revitalization and schools in southeastern EEstonia. In D. Gorter, H. F. Marten, &...

This study investigated the L2 motivation of five Chinese undergraduates learning Bulgarian as their major and studying in Bulgaria in a one-academic-year exchange programme. The focus of the study...

This paper investigates how inner speech in English as a foreign language (LX) and Chinese first languages (L1s) of 425 multilingual Chinese university students in the UK is affected by their stay....

The use of machine translation is increasingly prevalent in language education and social communication. This study explored how multilingual pupils who are learning English as an additional langua...

This study demonstrates how stakeholders’ treatment of English language as the sole marketable/saleable commodity in educational setting can have implications for multilingualism and existing lingu...