This paper investigates the role of English in voice assistant (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant) use from the perspective of language ideology. Major commercial companies in the voice assistant market use English as a training language for their speech technologies and offer the most optimised support for standardised varieties of English. This…

The article focuses on whether and to which extent heritage bilinguals make use of their heritage language while developing receptive skills in unknown languages which are either related to the majority language or the heritage language. Thirty four adolescent heritage speakers of Russian and Polish and a control group of thirty three German…

We investigate the interrelations between pronunciation and writing skills in French as a foreign language produced by two groups of bilingual learners (German-Russian; German-Turkish) and a monolingually raised German control group (each n = 10). As an indicator of the learners' pronunciation skills, we refer to a perceptually relevant acoustic…

The main objective of the article is to illustrate how language ideologies and language management at the macro-level (state language policy), micro-level (in families) and meso-level (local communities) influence language change and the conceptualization of multilingualism of immigrants from Upper Silesia residing in Germany. Language biographies…

Throughout an educational career, literacy skills become more elaborated. However, little is known about the development of reading and writing skills in foreign languages in adolescents. In this contribution, we focused on the development of language skills in the foreign languages English and French in Germany as measured by a C-Test. Hereby, we…

Foreign language learners frequently use words from their previously acquired language(s) in the target language, especially if these languages are related (Ringbom, Håkan. 2001. Lexical transfer in L3 production. In Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen & Ulrike Jessner (eds.), "Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition:…

This paper reports findings of a project on pedagogical translanguaging (PTL) among 128 fourth-grade students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in German primary schools. Over a period of six months, 20% of lesson time in EFL classes was devoted to multilingualism involving students' minority languages. In a control group pre-post-test…

This article scrutinises language discourse in transnational culture and considers theories on "reflexive modernity" (Beck et al. 2003) for analysis. I introduce symbolic meanings of language in transnational Communities of Practice constituted by salsa dance, where, depending on dance styles and on local, national and transnational…

As a result of globalisation and the European integration process, identity concepts of young Europeans are becoming more and more diverse and possibly heterogeneous. The factors that influence the development of identity formation and impact on identity constructions are complex--but language seems to be of central importance. It is generally…

This article investigates the educational trajectories of young multilingual learners in Germany. Drawing on previous ethnographic research in a primary bilingual German-Italian Two-Way-Immersion classroom, this study examines the continuity and fragmentation of multilingual learning as they occur in the transition from primary to secondary…

This paper begins by looking at responses to Bernstein in Germany in the 1970s that criticized his notions of class difference in sociolinguistic codes. As part of a re-examination of Bernstein's ideas, the paper goes on to look at the current communicative situation in German education where urban schools have many second-generation immigrant…