This commentary foregrounds factors and tensions involved in intergenerational language socialization in Chinese-speaking communities and homes. Of particular interest is the manner in which younger generations in homes in which other Chinese dialects ("fangyans") are spoken almost invariably seem to be shifting to Mandarin, and some of…

Prof. Baldauf was one of the first who saw the planning agency as a central issue in examining the effectiveness of language planning (LP) endeavors (e.g. Baldauf, R. B. Jr. (1982). "The language situation in American Samoa: Planners, plans and planning." "Language Planning Newsletter," 1(8), 1-6). This paper chooses the…

This article looks at the web comments to two video clips posted on YouTube in 2014. One video features the song 'Sangre Maya', by Pat Boy and El Cima, two Maya rappers from the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico. The other song is called 'Rap de la Tierra' and is performed by Luanko, a Mapuche rapper from Santiago in Chile. First, I discuss significant…

This paper examines the language planning situation in the Sultanate of Oman with emphasis on the planning of Arabic, English, French and German, and their choice and spread in serving different interests and purposes. The paper explores the historical, social, political, and ideological processes and complexities of the language policy and…

In this paper, the language policies of three Swedish universities are examined as instances of language planning in local contexts. Although Sweden has the national Language Act of 2009 (SFS 2009:600) as well as a general Higher Education Ordinance (SFS 1993:100; SFS 2014:1096), language planning for higher education is left to the purview of…

In the Czech Republic, Romani language planning has long been a controversial subject. The question informing the current research is whether the European Charter's goal of protecting, maintaining and invigorating Romani is attainable in a culture driven by standard language ideology, Czech society's aversion to multiculturalism and an overall…

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) began in June, 2008 as a response to the Indian Residential School legacy. The commission concluded with a 2015 report which includes 94 calls to action. Some of these calls pertain to higher education including the following example "We call upon post-secondary institutions to create…

This article examines the various language ideologies and cultural models that inform Hawaiian-language learners' experiences, language practices, and socio-ethnic identity as they attempt to become speakers of their heritage language. While Hawaiian-language education is often noted as a revitalization success story, and certainly is in terms of…

In this paper, we analyse the cultural models (or folk theory of language) that the Mapuche intellectual elite have about Mapudungun, the native language of the Mapuche people still spoken today in Chile as the major minority language. Our theoretical frame is folk linguistics and studies of language ideology, but we have also taken an applied…

The aim of this paper is to examine the increased potential for language change from the micro-level, given the new domains in which minority languages are present in the global era. Drawing on the theoretical notion of sociolinguistic scales this paper presents a comparative account of the changing positions of the Irish and Inari Sami languages.…

The aim of this monograph is to provide a detailed account of language policy and language planning in Cyprus. Using both historical and synchronic data and adopting a mixed-methods approach (archival research, ethnographic tools and insights from sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis), this study attempts to trace the origins and the…

This paper deals with current questions in revitalizing the regional language Latgalian, one of the varieties native to Latgale, a region located in the eastern part of Latvia. It first provides an overview of domains where Latgalian is used and highlights recent changes in these. Based on linguistic landscape data as well as interviews with…

In 1966, the Singapore Government implemented the English-knowing bilingual policy which made it mandatory for all Chinese students to study English as a "First Language" and the Chinese language (CL) as a "Mother Tongue Language" in Singapore schools. Using key literature relevant to Singapore's bilingual educational policy…

BBC ALBA is the first dedicated Gaelic-medium television channel in history. It launched in September 2008 and, in late 2010, announced that it would be carried on Freeview, in addition to Sky, Freesat, and BBC iPlayer, thereby widening access to Gaelic throughout Scotland. The channel is a BBC-licensed service that is presently operated as a…

The languages of Klingon and Na'vi, both created for media, are also languages that have garnered much media attention throughout the course of their existence. Speakers of these languages also utilize social media and information technologies, specifically websites, in order to learn the languages and then put them into practice. While teaching a…