This article explores how candidates discuss cultural topics that overlap with their sociocultural background during the Cambridge undergraduate admissions interviews, an academic gatekeeping encounter. On the one hand, discussion of this kind can be a source of epistemic authority for these candidates. On the other hand, such an affordance does…

This study adopted a social network perspective to explore the academic discourse socialization experiences of eight degree-seeking multilingual international students at a university in eastern China. Based on a triangulation of ethnographic interviews, social network questionnaires, and supplementary sources (e.g., voluntarily submitted…

This article takes a sociocultural linguistic approach to code switching in investigating discursive functions of shifts between Standard Japanese and a regional dialect (Iwate Dialect) in women's activity-centered, naturally occurring interactions. The paper extends previous scholarship to a consideration of how shifts are used for discursive…

Language brokering (LB) practices are a widespread phenomenon in transnational communities. This paper aims to add to the description and analysis of these practices within a community which has not been extensively studied--the Vietnamese in the Czech Republic, as well as show how LB is embedded in other sociolinguistic aspects of community life.…

In the present study we investigate empirically how six to seven-year-old children with their teachers take on the challenge of translating the lyrics of a children's song from Finnish to English, analyzing how translation is collaboratively constituted by the participants. The study is informed by translanguaging theory and a sociocultural…

In this article, we investigate second/foreign language teachers' translingual identity development through a narrative approach to their life histories. While several studies have investigated how teachers' intercultural experiences shape their identity formation and pedagogies, we explore not only the impact of teachers' identity on their…

Drawing on theories of family language policy and literacy environment, this inquiry explores and describes how family language policy is managed through literacy resources and literacy related activities in transnational families in the UK. A total of 66 families, each with at least one child between the age of 2 and 8, participated in this…