This article analyzes the legislation of the two territories that have the most advanced legal framework regarding language policies towards Catalan: Andorra and Catalonia. The study of the legislation in relation to contexts of social and institutional use shows how this legal framework is not sufficient to change Catalan from being a minoritized…

In this article, I explore how language revitalization initiatives are rescaled as part of a local, historical and sociocultural revitalization project in which ethnonationalist aspirations emerge in Northeastern Italy's Veneto region. Through an analysis of political emblems, textual artifacts, and speech participants' stories, I examine how the…

This paper takes up conviviality as an analytical tool to investigate everyday language choices made by foreign residents living in Ras Al Khaimah, a small city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It draws on recent work in human geography and cultural studies to understand conviviality in terms of practices rather than outcomes. Specifically, it…

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…

What people perceive as "a language"--a named entity--is abstracted from practices and notions about those practices. People take for granted that language is somehow a "thing," an objectively distinct and bounded entity. How languages come to be thus imagined indexes the conditions under which they are imagined. The articles…

This article explores how linguistic resources from two local languages, Finnish and Swedish, are used in expert presentations in bilingual formal meetings and how they function with respect to the three ideal criteria of professional communication: economy, efficiency, and precision. Based on the results, the article suggests a typology of…

This paper reports on an experimental study investigating alternative communication modes to English as a Lingua Franca. The purpose was to examine the effectiveness of different modes of communication and to gain insight in communication strategies used by interlocutors to solve referential conflicts. Findings show that ELF may not necessarily be…

This paper attempts to shed light on the role of language in keeping religion relevant to the individual and society in present times. In the context of postmodernity, religion has become more of a meaning system to address the existential questions of the individual. Religious institutions have had to accommodate the changes brought about by a…