Second language acquisition (SLA) research emphasizes the role of imagination in language learning, with learners often envisioning themselves engaging with native speakers. However, learners' language preferences may differ from those of native-speaker communities. For example, while regional language is used in native-speaker communities to…

South Africa immediately springs to mind as the epitome of multilingual language policies. In fact, its Constitution granted official status to 11 languages in 1996, and the Language Policy in Higher Education passed by the Ministry of Education in 2002 required universities to develop and use the indigenous official languages as academic…

People use many kinds of cues that help them navigate social interactions. We examined how perceived foreignness affected people's ability to map speaker-specific naming preferences, align with their interlocutors concerning these preferences, and make social inferences based on them. In a pseudo-interactive experiment, participants engaged with…

This paper examines the linguistic situation in Morocco, with a particular focus on Arabic. The Ministry of Education's approval of a grade two Arabic textbook that employs dialectal Arabic (Darija) words instead of Standard Arabic, which is the usual writing mode, created fierce controversy in the social and political scene between the defenders…

Linguistic diversity is growing in Higher Education, driven by factors like internationalization and digitalization. This trend necessitates a reevaluation of language practices within academic communities. Language Centres play a crucial role in modelling effective practices and reshaping these practices to address the multilingual needs of…

This study evaluates attitudes toward nonnative Englishes among students, faculty, and staff at a STEM-focused U.S. university. The study utilizes the verbal-guise technique: Participants listened to and rated three summaries of the same short story as told by native speakers of U.S. English, Chinese, and Arabic. This adapted verbal-guise…