Singapore is a multiracial nation with a majority ethnic Chinese population. Since its independence in 1965, it has adopted an 'English-knowing' bilingual policy to achieve economic, social, and political objectives. For the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in the percentage of ethnic Chinese Primary One students coming from…

Drawing on the notion of translanguaging, I show how learners in a Black township secondary school in Cape Town use their multilingual repertoire to achieve power, agency and voice. I use the conceptualisation of the prototypical pedagogical macrogenre from systemic functional linguistics to show how translanguaging can be used strategically to…

This paper contributes to the building of a sociolinguistics of the south by considering the nature and significance of contemporary language-in-education policy processes in Timor-Leste, and by tracing the ways in which these processes have been shaped by its specific colonial and post-colonial history. In presenting this account, I draw on…

Some 40 years ago, language transmission in Hawai'i was interrupted among Hawaiians across all islands with the sole exception of language maintenance among a small community on the tiny, isolated Ni'ihau Island. Today, Hawaiian has returned as spoken and written medium with some 5000-7000 new speakers. The present paper provides an up-to-date…

This overview identifies some common features of macro-level language planning and briefly summarises the changing approaches to the analysis of macro-planning in the field. It previews six cases of language-in-education planning in response to linguistic diversity presented by the contributors to this issue. The cases show how macro-planning can…

This article introduces the present collection of sign language planning studies. Contextualising the analyses against the backdrop of core issues in the theory of language planning and the evolution of applied sign linguistics, it is argued that--while the sociolinguistic circumstances of signed languages worldwide can, in many respects, be…

Frisian, a unique minority language in the Netherlands, is in the middle ranks of threatened European minority languages in Europe. In recent decades a framework for language policy has been developed in which the educational domain is one of the spearheads. This article provides an overview of language policy and language rights for Frisian…

Formal language use in online communication and phone messages is increasingly being replaced by a new age language, i.e. the net lingos commonly used in Internet acronyms and text messages. This is, perhaps, a logical consequence of computers, mobile phones and gadgets becoming familiar household items in an era where there is a constant demand…

This paper outlines the influences that led to new ethnolect formation among an immigrant group, the Maltese, in Australia. Their sociolinguistic background and new linguistic environment brought about a divergence, particularly in terminology, from Standard Maltese, and necessitated the compilation of a glossary of the new ethnolect, Maltraljan.…

Terminology is a central theme of debate about language shift in Malaysia's judicial system--sometimes seen as the last bastion of the colonial language. Advocates of more Malay in courtroom argument and professional practice often point to the Institute of Language and Literature's creation of thousands of terms to equip the national language for…