This paper engages with the negotiation of insider and outsider researcher identities in the context of Welsh-English bilingualism in Wales. It aims to develop a reflexive approach to researching bilingualism, foregrounding the actions and experiences of doing bilingual research in a minority language context. Taking data from education and…

Using census data from 2001 to 2016, we provide evidence that the French language is gaining ground in Quebec. We show that the apparent decline of French in Quebec is linked to a rise in multilingualism, especially when French is one of the multiple languages spoken. We argue that the census statistics are distorted by inter-linguistic marriages…

The present analysis interrogates the ways that American educators and bureaucrats at the turn of the twentieth century conceptualised the project of nationalism and modernity in the newly annexed nation of the Philippines through the trope of 'linguistic unification'. These robust ideologies of language arose from the perception that national…

This article examines how Russian speakers in Ireland delimit and describe (their/the) Russian language in relation to representations of standard Russian. It is based on analysis of discussions conducted between speakers of Russian living in Ireland, facilitated by the Our Languages (2008-2011) research project, investigating multilingualism and…

This article explores the implications of John Rawls' political liberalism for linguistic diversity and language policy, by focusing on the following question: what kind(s) of equality between speakers of different languages and with different linguistic identities should the state guarantee under political liberalism? The article makes three…

A vast amount of literature addresses issues surrounding English and French in colonial and post-colonial communities. However, relative to the spread of English and French language ideology, a limited amount of literature exists on Lusitanization (i.e. the spread of Portuguese colonial ideology by Portugal during colonialism and the role of…

This paper will consider language management from the perspective of efficiency, and will set the grounds for a new approach to linguistic justice: a market failure approach. The principle of efficiency emphasises the need to satisfy individuals' preferences in an optimal way. Applying this principle with regard to language would justify language…

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has long been considered a global policy in language education. It has been borrowed and adopted by different polities across the world. However, it is still not clear why the CEFR, intended for European usage, has become a ubiquitous tool for overhauling the quality of teaching and…

This paper identifies the issues of internal orientalism that are reproduced at a micro level within Pakistan because of English linguistic imperialism. The unequal education system engenders attitudes of English supremacy. Orientalism supports global divisions East and West wherein the former is subservient to the latter. This division is…

Taking into account the crosscultural differences in prescriptive attitudes in various linguistic communities, a theory of three types of prescriptivism--human-oriented, language-oriented, and error-oriented prescriptivism--has been offered [Strelevica-Ošina, Dace. [2011] 2012. "Kapec mes gribam, lai valoda ir pareiza? Ieskats preskriptivisma…

This paper analyses the controversial discourses around the significance of the Arabic language in Eritrea. It challenges the arguments of the government and some scholars, who claim that the Arabic language is alien to Eritrean society. They argue that it was introduced as an official language under British rule and is only spoken by the Rashaida…

The role of linguists in Lithuanian society is quite different from that in western countries. It is still broadly assumed that they not only describe the language use and codify the norms of standard variety, but that they also possess the status of moral authorities having access to the mysteries of language. In the tradition of Lithuanian…

While the defining cases of diglossia offered in Charles Ferguson's 1959 article have long been useful as vehicles for introducing this important form of societal multilingualism, they are also problematic in that they differ from each other in a number of significant ways. This article proposes a modified and more precise framework in which…

This article discusses the Belarusian case of post-communist development and the role and status of Belarusian ethnicity in Belarus' nation-formation process. "Nationalizing nationalism" (Brubaker), as realised by the Belarusian state through various social and cultural practices, is aimed at the creation of a Belarusian national entity…

In conversations between immigrants and officials, problems of understanding are often noticeable. About 280 recordings realised at the Argentine Aliens' Department and at several public authorities in Germany show that knowledge divergences regarding linguistic, cultural and institutional knowledge result in (sometimes grave) difficulties of…