This article draws on the case of conflict-affected and multilingual Cameroon to analyze how education materials address national unity and multilingualism amidst an identity crisis fueled by tensions between Anglophones and a central government accused of favoring Francophones. Through a discourse analysis of one policy document, 13 curricula,…

This targeted, qualitative study examines language attitudes, educational language policy, and literacy in an underrepresented segment of Haiti's multilingual society. Drawing on decolonizing theory, we take a critical stance, arguing that colonial language ideologies that privilege French and disempower Kreyol are reproduced in the…

The field of language policy and planning (LPP) has increasingly expanded its focus beyond legislative measures and macro-level policies toward understanding the power of social actors and their interpretation, appropriation, and creation of language policies in societies. This article aims to advance LPP theory and research by offering a critical…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the representation of black students in contemporary American English. Two questions were addressed, what is the semantic prosody of Black students, and what are the semantic roles for Black students. All the concordance lines containing the phrase Black students were downloaded from the Corpus of…

In a theory of language policy, managers are individuals or institutions with authority to require others to change their language practices or beliefs. Advocates are individuals or institutions who want the same result, but lacking any power to enforce, can only try to persuade. Language academies can be managers or advocates. Standardization is…

Despite an increased interest in academic language in recent years, critical and sociopolitical perspectives in this area of scholarship remain scarce. This paper presents brings such perspectives to the study of academic language by proposing a framework that highlights its situated social meanings through a focus on social identities and…

Health communication is a critical component of public health, which includes health education resources. Resource effectiveness is improved where health literacy demands, including the cultural appropriateness of resources, match the intended audience. International guidelines support the tailoring of resources for migrants from culturally and…

While considering Makoni and Pennycook's (2006) critique of the colonial nature of the notion of singular languages in this dissertation, a documentation and investigation of English and Spanish use on billboards in Carolina, Guaynabo, and San Juan, three cities in Puerto Rico, is presented. The billboards in these towns make use of Spanish, the…

Language and literacy education has long been a site of contestation. Lisa Delpit, an African-American language and literacy educator, shook this contested site in the 1980s and 1990s through her ground-breaking book "Other People's Children: Cultural Conflicts in the Classroom," by centring the voices, discontentment and hopes of…

This dissertation critically examines the Colorado Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act (READ Act) through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis, focusing on the discursive construction of the Act and its impact on educational opportunities for multilingual learners. The study explores the role of power and knowledge in shaping the READ…

This study examines how three recently arrived Indigenous male migrant youth from Guatemala and Mexico in an urban high school in the Pacific Northwest understood and employed Spanish and English to navigate racialized and languaged interactions. Utilizing a Critical Latinx Indigeneities framework, findings from this study show that Spanish is a…

Quantitative social scientists have adopted the positivist epistemology and methodology of natural sciences, seeking objectivity, generalisability, and neutrality. However, in social sciences -- unlike in natural sciences -- humans are both the investigators and the object of investigation, leading to intricate interconnections between researchers…

This collaborative autoethnography explores the intersection of heritage language (HL) maintenance, emotion, and identity from the perspectives of a mother and her 15-year-old daughter learning and maintaining Korean in the United States. The analysis of their narratives concerning critical emotional experiences relevant to HL maintenance reveals…

Recent studies on language and migration have attempted to address the social injustices stemming from global disparities in wealth and opportunities. However, there's a risk of researchers unintentionally reinforcing traditional power dynamics, positioning themselves in power while reducing participants to mere data sources. Focusing on migrants…

In this article, the authors argue that a particular view of language underpins approaches to supporting students in higher education, and that this view facilitates neo-liberalism. Universities worldwide have glossaries of terms such as 'describe' or 'discuss', and centralized units to help students understand what an 'essay' or 'report' is, and…