This article concerns Northern Catalonia, the part of the Catalan-speaking area that today is in France. A Catalan-speaking region until the first half of the twentieth century, the effects of Frenchification -- the acceptance of the French political and economic project in the contemporary era -- and the multiple demographic changes of the…

Xinjiang has witnessed constant state attempts to reinforce the status of Mandarin Chinese as 'the Common Language' and to make local Turkic languages -- mainly Uyghur and Kazak -- more 'suitable' to the modern world. Official efforts to transform the linguistic landscape of Xinjiang have engaged in a complex interplay with Turkic speakers' own…

While current debates oppose the cochlear implant's privileging of speech acquisition to teaching sign language, nineteenth-century debates, in contrast, opposed those who saw sign language as a tool for learning to read and write, and those who saw in it an autonomous language for organizing thought itself. Should the order of gestural signs…

In rural Valdres, Norway, the traditional regional dialect, called Valdresmål, has become an important resource for popular style and local development projects. Stigmatized through much of the twentieth century for its association with poor, rural, "backward" farmers and culture, Valdresmål has been thoroughly revalorized, with…

The question of script was paramount in the nineteenth-century debate over Hindi and Urdu, two closely related languages that are characterised by "extreme digraphia". Rather than rehearsing the well-known story of the culturally and politically charged process of differentiation in which the two sister languages became prime markers of…

In this article, we explore the meanings of literacy, and more specifically of reading, in the Mexican context from a sociocultural perspective and as a social practice, underlining the technologies, competence, knowledge, beliefs, and values that permeate literacy use. We consider the historical, cultural, and multilingual specificities of…

This article serves as an introduction to a collection of four articles on multilingual practices in speech and writing, exploring both contemporary and historical sources. It not only introduces the articles but also discusses the scope and definitions of code-switching, attitudes towards multilingual interaction and, most pertinently, the…

Chinese characters have been an obstacle preventing the development of Chinese proficiency for learners of Chinese whose native language does not have characters. A substantial literature review identified linguistic, pedagogical, and political factors as causes such difficulties. Tone changes represent different meanings of a word. Compound…

Describes recent efforts by members of the Ute tribe (northeastern Utah) to introduce a written form of the Ute language. Discusses several reasons for the resistance to Ute literacy among many members of the tribe and the steps that have been taken in response to these concerns. (EVL)

Presents a bibliographic survey of works describing the variations in contemporary French seen in regional, social, and stylistic associations. Also takes a critical look at the necessity for this variation from a sociolinguistic viewpoint and examines the potential limits of these varieties in the language. (216 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the different attitudes of native speakers in understanding a written genre of Modern Standard Chinese--sales letters. The study focuses on the use of formulaic components appearing in real Chinese sales letters and compares these components with the advice given in textbooks. Findings reveal a gap between business teaching and business…

Although American Sign Language (ASL) currently lacks an accepted writing system, one of the common reasons why it is not accepted for credit in foreign language programs, ASL does have a rich literary tradition. Several curricular remedies to improve those sign language courses are proposed. (CB)

Sought evidence for or against the assumption that significant intercultural variation exists in the rhetorical preferences of national cultures through contrastive analysis of research articles in English (n=36) and Spanish (n=36) on business and economics written by native speakers of each language. (45 references) (Author/CK)

In this article, I argue for an understanding of EAP to be mobilised more around language, its materiality, especially in written form, and the intellectual challenge of learning it. Concomitantly, I argue against the increasing technicisation of language, as it is embodied in the regulatory framework of institutions and its emaciation as an…