This editorial explores the intersection of equity and validity in language assessment, focusing on language-minoritized test-takers. Recognizing that tests often perpetuate inequitable power dynamics, our special issue, 'Equity Orientations for Validity Frameworks: Exploring the Intersections of Language and Assessment for Language-Minoritized…

Navigating support and seeking resources to support children and young people with additional learning needs (ALN) can be a challenge, but for those receiving state-funded education, the barriers to ensuring effective provision can be further compounded. This paper explores the challenges faced in Welsh-medium education by the hegemonic discourses…

Language policy and planning (LPP) has always drawn on research and scholarship in education as well as the social sciences in general (in particular sociology). Social theory has also figured as an important source of ideas and concepts, and critical LPP has arisen as a distinct strand of inquiry since the 1980s (Tollefson, in Planning language,…

Recent demographic changes in the United States have shown that we live in a multicultural society. However, for some reason, colleges and universities are still floundering in mediocrity when it comes to multiculturalism. What we see in higher education is multiculturalism that is fraudulent and unaccountable and the fact that individuals from…

Drawing on the perspective of decolonizing methodology, this paper problematises the conventional interview technique of avoiding yes-or-no questions introduced by handbooks of research methods in applied linguistics. By demonstrating how this interview technique was found unsuitable in the first author's ethnographic study of multilingualism with…

AI potential to recolonise language practices by reproducing existing marginalisations in novel ways has already instilled fears of a 'contemporary dystopia' (Miras et al., 2022) -- a space of cultural and linguistic erasure. Accents represent a distinctive aspect of language practice associated with one's sociocultural, and ethno-racial…

A well-devised formulation of language planning and policy creates a sense of ownership among speakers of all languages. At the same time, its absence may lead to asymmetrical power relations among speakers of different languages. This article aims at presenting a critical analysis of language planning and policy (LPP) in Pakistan and its impact…

In this article we discuss the practice and politics of translanguaging in the context of deaf signers. Applying the translanguaging concept to deaf signers brings a different perspective by focusing on sensorial accessibility. While the sensory orientations of deaf people are at the heart of their translanguaging practices, sensory asymmetries…

This paper explores the translation of non-canonised literature from a minority culture (Catalan) into a hegemonic culture (Spanish). In particular, it focuses on the ideological and sociocultural factors which lead the translator to purge the translation of idiosyncratic elements pertaining to the source culture. The aim is to show that the…

The articles in this issue of "Language and Education" highlight three important areas of research that inspire empirical investigation and theoretical debate in the field of language policy and planning (LPP): (1) the tension between power and agency, (2) the multi-layered nature of policy-making, and (3) researcher positionality. This…

This article takes a linguistic anthropological approach to analyzing multilingualism in the linguistic landscape of the Amazonian city of Tena, Ecuador, a key locus of indigenous Kichwa language revitalization, identity formation, and politics. Following recent scholarly reconsiderations of multilingual linguistic landscapes as sites of…

In qualitative educational research, the languages spoken by the participants and the researchers can greatly impact the quality of the data collected. This paper will explore the advantages and disadvantages of being an insider researcher by virtue of speaking the same language(s) as the participants. Whether the researcher is a linguistic…

Whether second language (L2) teaching contributes to the enslavement or empowerment of learners has become a branch in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages research. More and more discussions are emerging, and they tend to base on more and more diverse theoretical frameworks. This article aims to shed light on this issue by exploring it…

Historically, American public schools played an important role in assimilating immigrants with different cultures into the mainstream. This process is currently occurring in other parts of the world that are undergoing demographic changes due to immigration. Some of these countries have turned to multicultural education as a tool to respond to…

Discourses which seek to position different speakers/users of Breton through the use of labels such as 'traditional', 'new', 'learner', 'néo-bretonnant', 'brittophone', etc. draw on persistent essentialist ideologies of language and create, in the process, contested elites and counter-elites in Breton-speaking networks. These discourses can be…