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This article examines the emerging language practice in post-communist Mongolia that we call ‘new Monglish’ – complex linguistic processes in which English may be deeply absorbed and integrated into the Mongolian language. The original forms of English have transformed as the Mongolian social media users manipulate English to function in the space of relocalisation – the linguistic process which is re-adapted to the local context to yield new local meanings. This English relocalisation process has adjusted to Mongolian alphabetical and grammatical systems and is yielding new meanings understandable only to the speakers of Mongolian. English has been integrated into the Cyrillic and transliterated Roman Mongolian scripts, full Mongolian sentences, and the Mongolian grammatical, phonetic, lexical, semantic, and syntactic systems. Such relocalisation of English makes it a part of the local language rather than a separate system.

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This article aims to explore the link between linguistic subordination and linguistic inferiority complexes in the context of English as a second language (ESL) migrants in Australia. We address the following research questions: (a) To what extent and how do ESL migrants in Australia suffer from linguistic subordination? (b) To what extent and how is this linguistic subordination linked to linguistic inferiority complexes for ESL-migrants in Australia? (c) What are the main social implications of the link between linguistic subordination and linguistic inferiority complexes for ESL migrants? Design/methodology/approach: The study involved the participation of 150 participants who were observed using linguistic ethnography. The participants engaged in interviews and focus group discussions so that we could explore the psychological consequences of linguistic subordination that they encountered. Data and analysis: The interviews and focus group discussions were transcribed and analysed with consideration to the context, as well as the participants’ utterances and paralanguage. The study followed alternative quality criteria. Findings/conclusions: Many ESL migrants in Australia face linguistic subordination for the way they speak English. Consequently, these migrants suffer from linguistic inferiority complexes – psychological and emotional damages, which result in self-marginalisation, self-vindication, loss of sense of belonging, social withdrawal, fear, anxiety and the erosion of self-confidence. We find that there is a direct link between linguistic subordination and linguistic inferiority complexes. Originality: This article addresses a gap that exists regarding the link between linguistic subordination and the development of linguistic inferiority complexes, discusses how this has real-life consequences for ESL migrants, and explores how this may be overcome. Significance/implications: ESL migrants need support so t

This article examines the impact of social media on the linguistic and communicative practices in post-socialist countries, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Mongolia–the contexts very much under-represented in the discussion of translingualism. Relocalisation of social media-based linguistic resources in the languages used in these peripheral countries represents linguistically innovative practice, which entails orthographic, morphosyntactic, and phonologic adaptation of Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube labels, as well as their semantic reformulation in Bosnian, Serbian, and Mongolian resources. Social media-oriented linguistic terminologies are being adapted to the Cyrillic alphabet in Serbian and Mongolian and adopt grammatical features of the Bosnian variety. The original forms in social media are manipulated by social media users to serve their own ethos and local sociolinguistic practices. As a result, new forms of languages and linguistic meanings are created.

Linguistic racism explores the varied ideologies that may generate and endorse monolingual, native, and normative language practices, while reinforcing the discrimination and injustice directed towards language users whose language and communicative repertoires are not necessarily perceived as standard and normal. This article, thus, investigates linguistic racism, as a form of existing, but newly defined, racism against unconventional ethnic language practices experienced by Eastern-European immigrant women in the Australian workplace. Our ethnographic study shows that, once these women directly or subtly exhibit their non-nativism, through a limited encounter with local expressions, non-native language skills, and ethnic accents, they become victims of covert and overt linguistic racism in the form of social exclusion, mockery, mimicking, and malicious sarcasm in the hierarchical power environment of the workplace. As a result, these migrants can suffer from long-lasting psychological trauma and distress, emotional hurdles, loss of credibility, and language-based inferiority complexes. We, as researchers, need to highlight the importance of combatting workplace linguistic racism and revealing language realities of underprivileged communities. In that way, we can assist them in adapting to host societies and help them regain some degree of power equality in their institutional environments.

Language in the Balkan region of Southeastern Europe has a complex and turbulent history, acutely embodied in the tripartite and trilingual state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in which Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs all make claim to their own mutually-intelligible varieties of local “languages”. This study utilizes a linguistic landscape methodology to consider language use in Sarajevo, the capital of BiH, approximately 20 years after a brutal war that led to the establishment of the country. Data originate from three municipalities within the Sarajevo Canton – namely, Old Town, Center, and Ilidža – because of their representation of the region’s diversity and history. Signs were classified according to the three primary language varieties, i.e., Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian; BCS, representing a common core among the three varieties, as well as English, other languages, and mixed languages. The application of BCS uniquely positions the present research in comparison to other studies of language use in the region and allows for a more nuanced, less politically and ethnolinguistically fraught analysis of the communicative tendencies of users. More specifically, data indicate that actors in the linguistic landscape transcend the boundaries of their national, ethnic, and religious identities by tending towards the more neutral BCS, suggesting an orientation towards more translingual dispositions than previous variety-bound approaches have indicated. Thus, instead of the divisiveness of linguistic identity politics, the linguistic landscape of Sarajevo indicates a tendency toward inclusion and linguistic egalitarianism.